The Lisbon Treaty - Rejection opens door to unknown

HOW’S that for a humiliating, demeaning and irrefutable kick in the transom? No matter how the spin doctors try to dress it up with talk of immediate reviews and extensive analysis, it was a bloodbath.

Just like Custer taking the field at Little Big Horn, it never occurred to our Government that things could go so very, very wrong, so terribly wrong for their yes campaign. It was a dart in the eye to Ireland’s great and good who thought that their endorsement was all that was needed to carry the day.

The very great and good who thought that a bit of the usual cajoling and that old reliable — the tribal call to arms — would counterbalance the great democratic deficit; the great confusion and distrust in which the yes campaign drowned. Confusion about converging armies, confusion about independence on taxation, confusion about representation and confusion about legislation to protect workers’ rights.

There were, of course, a great number of people who voted no for the very best of reasons: they believed it was the right thing to do. Others voted to make a specific point unrelated to the treaty.

It is easy to understand why there was such uncertainty. The treaty was vague at best, opaque enough to sow considerable doubt and it is difficult to believe that this was not how it was meant to be. Especially as confusion was acknowledged as an ally by some of the architects of the entire EU project.

If there can be any sympathy for the Government, and the other politicians who campaigned for a yes vote — and sympathy is very difficult to muster — it is that they were the only politicians in Europe who had to deliver a yes vote. But then, the fact that this was so is part of the problem. If it was so important for the Irish to vote yes, why were the other 495 million Europeans not being asked for a mandate?

Virtually every party that has been in power in this country since the foundation of the State, almost every business organisation, the main church, most trade unions, farmers’ organisations and a considerable majority of commentators advocated that the treaty be ratified but an independent and unconvinced electorate decided otherwise.

It was too great a leap of faith, especially as those who insisted that they knew what was best for the country had squandered their credibility — personal and political — by sustaining a leadership that had lost all moral authority for far too long.

How Taoiseach Brian Cowen must wish this June Saturday morning that Bertie Ahern had held on for just a few months more; that Mr Ahern would be the one to go to Brussels next week to explain why we have rejected the Lisbon Treaty. To explain what we have found so very difficult and, in what will prove a far greater challenge, to explain where we go from here. And where do we go from here?

It is difficult to hope that the other 26 member states can go back to the drawing board either to clarify or revise the treaty. That proposal is not without risk either as any revised treaty is not guaranteed the support of the electorate. The day before we voted, the Finnish and Estonian parliaments ratified the treaty, bringing to 17 the number of states who endorsed it.

However, in what seems a more likely prospect, France, which takes over the EU presidency next month, argues that a no vote should not block ratification of Lisbon. “We’d have to find particular ad hoc mechanisms of co-operation with the Irish... and the process of ratification would have to continue,” said France’s Europe minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet. He spoke of finding a “legal arrangement” with Ireland at the end of the ratification process.

Whether that, or similar proposals, is what the Irish electorate voted for is questionable but already the implications are clear. This project is going ahead with or without us.

Once again, as it always does at challenging moments in its development, the idea of a two-tier European Union community was floated yesterday. It is not difficult to imagine to which tier Europe’s more pro-active members might assign us this morning.

Whether this vote was informed by mistrust, opposition to the strengthening of the European bulwark in a rapidly changing world, fear of the unknown or a resentment created by contempt shown for community-wide democracy is now utterly irrelevant.

The people — 862,145 of you at least — have made their wishes known and those wishes must now shape our government’s agenda. Will the victory for the no campaign have any more significance than Custer’s last stand? Only time will tell.