Lisbon II: The same old story but the ending will be a real cliffhanger

IF you think that women who are raped must be forced to go full term, or you don’t believe in military intervention under any circumstances whatsoever, or you hoped that killing the better part of 2,000 people would bring people together on this island, or you revere Leon Trotsky, the chances are you will be voting No on October 2.

If, on the other hand, you instinctively shun such extremism and you think the EU has significant achievements to its credit – a single market, democratising eastern Europe and strong environmental rules, to name but three – then you are likely to tell a pollster it’s your intention to vote Yes to Lisbon.

Certainly, it will be a damning indictment indeed of the Government should it fail to get the treaty through this time. Whether it can remain in office in those circumstances is an open question. After all, a series of events over the course of the past year – and some fairly shrewd diplomatic tictacking – should make it a slam dunk, a racing certainty.

Even if the Germans aren’t going to bail out the economy, there is a powerful desire to cling on to nurse for fear of something even worse.

No one is quite going to say “Vote Yes or it’s McCarthy Plus”, but let’s just say the national mood is ripe for a bit of subtle scaremongering about the impact on your pocket of another No.

For instance, the European Central Bank is being lauded as if saying Lisbon is a bad treaty means membership of the single currency is somehow jeopardised. Did anyone suggest such a thing when the French said Non to the first hash of the European constitution?

No, because membership of the eurozone is governed by criteria. You would think the whole EU would somehow fall apart without Lisbon. It hasn’t, and it won't.

Another blessing for the Government is the fact that what you might call the moderate, pro-European but anti-Lisbon camp is largely leaderless.

For all his egomania, Declan Ganley was a key factor in swaying undecided voters not to give their assent to a document they either felt they didn’t understand or suspected was deliberately obscure.

Moreover, no one this time is being complacent, assuming the Irish people’s natural pro-European bent means they will gratefully vote for any old rubbish (though why anyone ever did alter the first Nice result is anyone’s guess). The Taoiseach now says he’s read the whole damned thing, poor chap.

So the No camp is largely fronted by an exotic, not to say motley, crew. Many of their personalities were on the wrong side of some of the most crucial arguments in Ireland over the course of the last generation. An Ireland run by them would be a sorry place indeed.

But on October 2 you won’t be asked to make Patricia McKenna Taoiseach or put Mary Lou MacDonald in charge of the gardaí or make Joe Higgins responsible for the national finances. The question will be, do you approve the Lisbon Treaty?

Now there will be a great effort to convince everyone it’s not really Lisbon you’re voting on as much as a package of firm commitments, binding protocols and concrete guarantees – but it’s the same old Lisbon really.

Depending on your point of view, the deal the Taoiseach brought home was either an EU solution to an EU problem or a rather sophisticated agreement which provides as many assurances as was technically feasible – without the thing being sent back for reratification across the 23 states which have passed Lisbon in all its stages.

I tend to the latter view. The problem is, naturally enough as far as the eurocrats are concerned, reratification was only unthinkable because on no account must anyone be allowed a democratic say thus giving people the option of voting No as well as Yes (It’s fair to say that if Lisbon failed to get through in Ireland by 7%, it would have been 37% in some other member states.

This is a vicious spiral that the eurocrats get themselves into: the more they seek to deny ordinary people a say, the more likely they are to receive a polite two-fingered salute if and when the people ever do get a chance.

Basically, the guarantees are neither worthless – as Higgins, McKenna, et al, say – nor are they watertight – as Dick Roche and others would have you relieve. They clarify the fact that Lisbon never was an attempt to impose abortion on demand on Ireland. What they lack is the full force of EU law. That will only come as an adjunct to a further treaty, presumably that on Croatian accession, sometime in the future.

As it happens, Croatian accession is proving far more problematic – border disputes with Slovenia, problems with organised crime – than anyone envisaged and is far from a done deal.

By the time that any such treaty comes around – if it does – there will be a whole other cast of actors on stage too (notably in Britain one expects) who won't be looking to make life easy for Brussels. The Government, therefore, is asking you to take things on trust.

That means, as the EU presidency was obliged to confirm, “the Lisbon Treaty is not changed”. There are no Danish-style opt-outs: Ireland gets Lisbon 100%.

Is that such a bad thing? If you are concerned about neutrality, yes it is. Such scenarios are hard to imagine but if any other member state, including those touching on Russia and the Muslim world, were to be attacked, Ireland is bound to provide assistance.

The point is not, though, which side Ireland should take in any unforeseeable conflict (if any) but whether the Dáil is the place where such a decision to devote troops is made.

AS IRELAND’S current commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, has pointed out only slightly melodramatically, 95% of the other countries would have said No to Lisbon if given the chance, not because of neutrality but because Lisbon isn’t the treaty that was promised.

If it were simply a consolidation of all the previous treaties, a tidying up exercise, no one could seriously object.

But it wasn’t, and isn’t. The drafters couldn’t resist the temptation to self-aggrandise and suck some more power away from democratic legislatures and give it to what the German constitutional court called, in so many words, a benign but undemocratic bureaucracy.

Some expressed surprise about the German ruling. They shouldn’t have. It’s a very simple point to grasp, even for non-legal people like me. Power in the EU rests with the Commission, which is not elected. If you or I don't like what it does, we can’t kick them out.

The European “Parliament” meanwhile is a misnomer. There are no perfect analogies but how would you feel if the Seanad was superior to and had the power to overrule the Dáil, rather than the other way around? So if the Irish people vote Yes, they will do so with their eyes wide open. My prediction is that the polls will narrow dramatically once the arguments are had.

The debate is already revolving not around supposed benefits of Lisbon, but around the strength of the measures designed to protect Ireland from its full effects. Tells you something, doesn’t it?