Nasty and brutish campaign sees SF emerge as real winner

ENDA Kenny’s subliminal slogan, “vote yes because things can only get worse”, may not have been the most uplifting of mantras but it delivered the win.

A grubby, bitter campaign was only tempered by its relative brevity. Philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ summation of human existence as “nasty, brutish, and short” could have been written to describe the hustings.

It was the referendum nobody wanted about the thing nobody understood and though Mr Kenny and Eamon Gilmore avoided the humiliation of having to push the whole thing through again in the autumn, they were both left damaged by the bruising experience.

Though it lost on the day, Sinn Féin remains the big winner for the future.

As one senior Labour figure put it: “We’ve crashed to 10% in the polls and Sinn Féin got exactly what they wanted — the treaty passed so they won’t be blamed for the aftermath of rejecting it while our working-class vote switches to their message en mass. That way lays disaster for Labour.”

The way now is definitely Frankfurt’s, not Labour’s — a realpolitik which will come back to haunt Mr Gilmore.

Though he avoided the crushing early blow to his authority that befell Brian Cowen after the first Lisbon treaty vote, Mr Kenny’s personal prestige has been dented by his decision to dodge TV debates which made him look shifty, not statesmanlike as he claims.

The rag-bag no collective of lefties, vanity merchant multimillionaires, and hard right-wing British MEPs was allowed to dominate the early running as a government campaign cranked slowly into gear despite the dire precedent of similar tactics ahead of the Lisbon I fiasco.

When Enda and Co finally did get off the starting blocks they decided that terrorising the electorate was the best form of engagement.

And so a nightmare world was painted of the horror that would befall the country if Ireland dared vote no.

Forget Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome, life beyond the fiscal treaty would see hand-to-hand fighting for the last tin of dog food left on the shelves of Dunnes as people desperately battled to have something to feed their kids.

The Socialists were equally disingenuous, insisting in their own version of magical realism that not only would a no vote see water charges and the household tax abolished, but the EU would be bending over backwards to shove more dosh our way if we slapped them in the face with a rejection.

But then the left was never really lucky with its campaign choices, launching a poster push in a swanky Dublin wine bar — which led to suggestions the group mistakenly thought they had booked a whine bar for their downbeat agenda. This was only topped when the lights went out at the final press conference, which seemed a wonderfully fitting metaphor for what the yes side said would happen to the country if Joe Higgins and Co got their way.

Despite being an angry, bitter little campaign there were no real own goals, and given the result, Richard Bruton’s blunder in blurting out that there would be a second poll if we voted no probably proved a subliminal strategic masterstroke. Nobody believed his later claims to the contrary and fear of all this dragging on until October probably saw many waiverers trudge back into the yes camp.

That said, Michael Noonan did his best to turn them no again with his stunning ignorance of the implications of a Greek exit from the euro, which he said would only be noticed by feta cheese eaters.

It was an intervention almost as crass as when the right-wing UK Independence Party boasted in a press release that its photo-op would showcase “a good looking Danish MEP and female assistant”.

Jostled and splattered as he toured the country, Mr Kenny’s dig at what some of his Blueshirt colleagues call “doleys” as he seemed to berate an unemployed man for being out of work was not really the best tactic when you are already on the backfoot.

It is no wonder Enda’s handlers did all they could to keep him out of TV debates because when he was let loose things did not usually go to plan, such as when he told the no protester: “You could do with a day’s work, I’d say”. So could about half a million other people, Taoiseach.

However, he got the result he wanted and the Taoiseach proved that when it comes to euro referenda he is The Little Enda That Could.