Over the past couple of weeks a whiff of No has been drifting across from Ireland. The only Lisbon referendum on offer will be happening there in less than a month, and the “Yes” campaign is looking shakier than it was a month ago. By contrast the “No” campaign has caught the scent of blood.
I’ll declare an interest. I’d be happy to see them vote “No”, because the EU is big enough to survive another constitutional upset. I’d even encourage it, because the whole process, starting from the constitutional congress back in 2001, has been a fraud.
Why the Irish might vote no
Lots of Irish won’t be voting on the efficacy, justice, and beauty of the Treaty signed in Lisbon. How could they? Why should they? It’s three hundred pages long, and is incomprehensible to anyone but an expert. Only three men in Europe have read it; one went mad, another’s dead.
Instead, they’ll not bother voting. Or, they’ll vote on immediate issues. Some might vote for their dissatisfaction on the economy, which is heading for a hard landing. Others might vote for the property crash. And some will even vote about immigration, which is partly seen as “caused” by the EU. And of course if hospital services get much worse, that’ll be no to Lisbon.
But some Irish are arguing about the Treaty in a well-informed way too, better than we’ve seen in the UK. Tax harmonisation is seen as a particular threat, as is the lack of clarity about extension of QMV and the current shenanigans about having an EU President. They’re actually going to the text and talking about what it means.
The Irish have voted No before and the sky didn’t fall on their heads. It takes a bit of nerve for a country to reject something with so much political weight behind it, but the Irish have experience and they’ll be sceptical if Cassandra-like politicians prophesy a new dark age, recession and expulsion from the EU (as Cowen is already doing).
What would happen then, then?
It’s hard to say! Technically it could be highly problematic, because parts of the Treaty are already half way to implementation. Other countries have ratified it on the understanding that everybody was coming along for the ride. They’ll be disappointed.
But in practice these things are never as disastrous as they look from the outside. The TEU would continue to exist, and the business of everyday Brussels would continue.
In an ideal world, the sneaky, politicking, dishonest and ambitious fools who are lying the Treaty into existence would be shown the door. The Treaty would be re-written on no more than four sheets of A4 paper, and the Commission would be fired.
But this would still leave the extension of competences - the real reason for having the Treaty - hanging in the air. The areas of justice, criminal law, public health, space exploration and so on would still be on the table.
The EU could easily find a way to introduce them regardless, either in toto or partially, and I’ve no doubt they would. But the problem is that this would require a continuation of the dishonesty and concealment the politicians have practised during the past five years. Eventually, it’s not just the well-informed minority who will get fed up with this approach, the average voter will begin to see through it too.
Nevertheless what I believe would happen, if the Irish voted no, is that Lisbon would be abandoned but its grand measures would be brought into existence regardless. The politicians would realise that Lisbon was just a symbol of the thing, not the thing itself. Extra slipperiness would be deployed to achieve the same result over a longer timeframe and large buckets of deception poured into tanks full of red herrings. So to speak.
That result would hardly be satisfactory. But in any case at this stage it’s all a lot of speculation.
