Four blokes and a website driving Republic into the No Camp?
Naoise Nunn of Libertas (and Slugger alumnus) was on the Today Programme this morning, and seemed to have entirely wiped the floor with Ruairi Quinn on the subject of the Lisbon Treaty referendum. The SuperCoalition (ie, the world, his wife and all their in-laws) lined up against Sinn Fein and a raft of tiny groups parties including Libertas (termed not entirely inaccurately as ‘four blokes and a website’ by Newton Emerson last week) is suffering a bit of a shock given the latest opinion poll has the No camp ahead by five points! The Taoiseach, was clearly not happy when the Irish Times informed him of the poll results:
“Please continue with our commitment to the European project. It is fundamentally in our interests to do so,” he told the electorate during an interview with RT?s Pat Kenny.
“The question of our taxation is not at issue here. We retain unanimous requirements for that to be changed. . . . We negotiated that and we were accommodated by the European Union,” he said.
“Secondly, in relation to these big lies about the Commission, for example . . . at the moment under the existing treaty in the Nice Treaty there is a commitment to reduce the number of commissioners. What we have achieved in this Treaty during our own presidency is the whole question of expressing equality of treatment for all countries in that respect.
“So Germany who used to have two will also be without one in one in every three commissions as will Ireland, which has four million people.
“In relation to neutrality, again our position is absolutely clear. It’s a unanimous requirement in relation to security and defence matters. We still have the triple lock for parliament and for Government approval and of course for UN sanction, and that’s all respected.”
Labour leader Eammon Gilmore cautioned people not to panic just yet:
We also need to retain a sense of perspective on the poll results. The numbers currently indicating that they will vote No (35%) is well below the numbers who actually voted No in the Nice I referendum in 2001 (54%) and even below the numbers who voted against Nice II (37%) in 2002,” he added.
“Clearly the 35 per cent that have still to make up their mind will be crucial to the outcome of the referendum. We now have a little less than a week to show them the very real benefits of a Yes and the potential negative consequences of a No vote.”
The worrying thing from the Yes Camp’s point of view is that the conversion rate of ‘Don’t knows’ to ‘Knows’ is running strictly in the Noes favour.
Tony at Achem One reckons (H/T Cian) that the big problem is not the ideologues who are agin it, but what he calls ‘the passive noes’:
The passive ‘No’ is a more worrying long term problem. This Treaty is no more complex than any of the previous Euro-referendums, but people are now complaining that they don’t understand it and must vote ‘No’. This fear of complexity didn’t arise in the past, because there was always some selling point for Ireland, and people focused on that rather than the fine detail.
Lisbon doesn’t have this headline selling point. It is an administrative treaty, whose main focus is on the inner workings of a body that is remote from the Irish people. Its complexity is not sinister, but we must take that on trust. In an era where our most successful party has traded on a dumbed down political discourse, such trust seems to be evaporating, and the level of passive negativity is surely a sign that the people are starting to question rather than blindly accept the party line.
Notwithstanding Tony’s point about this being a deeply unsexy, administrative treaty, I would add two things:
- There has also been little preparation done for this campaign on the part of the Super Coalition. Indeed they were still bickering over who would take the lead nearly 2 weeks into the campaign. Bertie’s great strategy of taking it quickly before the opposition could do anything about it now seems to be playing against them. One woman interviewed on The Politics Show last week (see below).
- And following on from that, the Libertas effort demonstrates that early entry, good organisation, sharp marshalling of PR, combined with the right opportunity (not to mention a decent whack of cash), asymmetrical campaigning can be extremely powerful. The attempt to take them out of the game (by everyone from the Irish Times, to the Sunday Independent, and even the Phoenix) was a bad case of a lunging late tackle.
And it seems to have hit the Irish establishment just where it hurts: right in the policy void that is the bickering cockpit of Irish politics.
Sir Basil Rosemary
With Odin and Thor. Could you please and make your political messages shorter?
Janus Hansen/Copenhagen/Denmark
Basil, a European standards agency is a great idea. Indeed, countries even shared standards for the supply and manufacture of goods before the EU… go figure, eh?
However, there is a big difference between coperating on common standards and merging into a common country with a common army, common parliment, common laws, common constitution, etc. The latter is being used as the pretext to engineer the former.
We need to return the EU to first principles: that it is a common market for a group of coperating nation states and must not become a country.
Sorry Mr Hansen.
I thought to add a link to the article but I was worried that you (or other readers) might not have access to the economist’s subscriber services.
Dave,
Perhaps you are right. There is an argument for a Europe that is, more explicitly, a set of overlapping institutions – an economic union, a union of borders, a union of mutual-defence; membership of one neither requiring nor dictating membership of another.
Can you honestly say though that the various opt-outs and vetos remaining to Ireland do not have the same effect? You imply that Ireland’s membership of a customs union which uses (to facilitate a larger membership) more majority voting, demands that it also join a future defence union.
Beyond her contribution to the Nordic battlegroup, only to be used in UN missions, I see little evidence of this “threat”.
Dave ,
‘The ‘rest of us’ still believe in democracy, self-determination, independence and sovereignty.’
So who exactly is this us ? Who do you speak for other than yourself ? The UK Independence party?
Many will be so unconcerned about Thursday’s vote that 40% will probably not even make it to the polling booth . The majority will go the Yes vote despite the efforts of Mr Adams and his assorted supporters .
All of the EU nations have ratified the Treaty of Lisbon and Ireland won’t be an exception.
This is not the Eurovision song contest!
Tepl?
Humanist poet Johannes von Tepl?
“Technology Enhanced Professional Learning”?
Leider nicht
Dyslexia mixed with speed (the no time variety and a persistent obstinacy to use spell checker )
Excellent points re EU regulatory standards winning the global competition race.
‘In Europe corporate innocence is not assumed.’
The US Lead industry got away for decades poisoning it’s workforce . And would still be at it were it not for the efforts of one Clair Patterson.
Before 1923 there was almost no lead in the atmosphere . The USA banned the use of lead in indoor paints 44 years after most of Europe . Even lead solder -highly toxic was not removed from American food containers until 1993.
There are many other examples out there of of ‘corporate’ greed . I believe the American consumer is discovering the hard way that europeans are better protected from corporate greed than they are.
‘Another of Bush’s gobshites who helped push the USA into a totally unnecessary war in Iraq and caused the deaths of 4, 500 US military and 300,000 ? Iraqis and who have delivered the world economy oil heading for 150 dollars a barrel .’
He is a great man with the guts to tell it like it is. Causing liars like you to spin into the ground. And, as usual your numbers are wrong, wrong, wrong…
Tsk, tsk…
Do you’re homework, or stay a whinging, desk thumping liberal.
Bfb,
‘as usual your numbers are wrong, wrong, wrong…’
Naw I just left out some few numbers which you normally choose to blissfully ignore . The 2 to 3 million Iraqi refugees forced to flee their country as a result of the American invasion- also the 10,000 plus Americans seriously injured many crippled for life and not least the 40 to 50,000 US soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress disorder or the huge increase in suicides in the US military .
Never in the history of the United States has it had such an incompetent -fiscally improvident administration nor one with such an idiotic foreign policy .
‘He is a great man with the guts to tell it like it is’
I’m not doubting his guts. It’s the ‘organ’ that operates his thinking process that’s been the problem .
Don’t the Norweigians describe their peripheral position as a “fax democracy”; ever ready to adopt the next piece of common market legislation
I remember feeling sorry for the Norwegians during tedious negotiations on arcane points of policy at the Justus Lipsius Building. The had a seat at the table, and to stay part of the internal market they had to implement what we decided. They could speak, but they had no vote and with no vote they had no horse-trading power, which was a pity as they usually spoke sense.
The annoying thing about the Libertas campaign is the focus on the loss of a Commissioner. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s very smart politics. Every other fringe group have a paranoid conspiracy theory from the EU wanting to privatise everything and export your job to India to the EU wanting to give 14 year old girls compulsory practical sex education lessons. Libertas had the wit not to present the EU as the end of the anarcho-capitalist state, but to focus on the issue of losing the Commissioner. This is a concrete loss; the Yes campaign have put before the public no concrete counter, just a load of waffle and bluster.
Smart referendum politics though it is, anyone who thinks all 27 EU countries should get a Commissioner of right needs their head examined. Do all 50 US States get a member of the US Cabinet? The same people campaigning in favour of 27 Commissioners (could be 35 by 2020) are usually the first to complain about ever sprawling bureaucracy.
Irish soft power is one of the most remarkable things about the EU. A country with less than 1% if the EU population gets what it wants 90% of the time through a combination of good PR, speaking the lingua franca as natives, having a suitably sexy revolutionary history and getting Hungarians and Portuguese drunk in the James Joyce, and then having Dutch university students write essays about how they do it.
No country has less to fear from losing an automatic Commission place. But equally no country has more to lose by polluting its brand with its partners. It’s a small step from being the EU’s golden boy with the cutesy revolutionary past to being typical Eurosceptic Anglophones.
I’m far from a big fan of the Lisbon Treaty, but some institutional reform needed to happen post-enlargement and it’s better than doing nothing. The way the Commission and many member states behaved after the French and Dutch referenda was a case of the hysterical crossed with the delusional. If Ireland was going to vote No with a chance of the French and Dutch, not to mention Brits, Danes and Swedes, doing the same thing, I’d be tempted to vote No just to force a necessary crisis to force genuinely democratising reforms through the Union. But voting No when 24 other countries have already given it the nod is diplomatic suicide.
In fact, the No campaigners urging people to vote No to ‘keep our clout in Europe’ are probably the most delusional people I’ve seen in action for a long time.
“Do all 50 US States get a member of the US Cabinet?”
You’re not just that the EU is about to become a federal state as a result of this treaty Sammy, are you?
Perhaps I’m not allow to doing this: But I has upload an documentary film on The Pirate Bay about Stalin.
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4226776/Stalin_-_The_man_of_Steel_(Documentary___subs)
Janus Hansen/Copenhagen/Denmark
Sammy,
“If Ireland was going to vote No with a chance of the French and Dutch, not to mention Brits, Danes and Swedes, doing the same thing, I’d be tempted to vote No just to force a necessary crisis to force genuinely democratising reforms through the Union. But voting No when 24 other countries have already given it the nod is diplomatic suicide.”
This constitution was put to the people in two countries, France and the Netherlands, and it was voted down on both occasions.
A No vote this week would make it 3/0 No.
You’re not just that the EU is about to become a federal state as a result of this treaty Sammy, are you?
The EU is and has been for decades something between an international body and a federal state. What’s your point?
This constitution was put to the people in two countries, France and the Netherlands, and it was voted down on both occasions.
Both of whose governments decided to ignore the wishes of their people, sign up to a Treaty that was the constitution in drag, and were joined by every other country in the Union.
It’s currently 26-0 and Ireland is the last country to phone in the results of its Eurovision jury. Will it suit Ireland to be the only naysayer I doubt it.
I don’t like being boxed into corners by political force majeure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respond when it happens.
‘Will it suit Ireland to be the only naysayer I doubt it. ‘
It may sound ironic but on this occasion the Irish (ROI) will prove to be loyal EU Unionists. Being the odd man out is of course the market ‘niche ‘ and a predominantly ‘unionist’ predeliction in these islands .
27 -0
Mr. Flag
Cite sources for your figures or stfu. You are a textbook, barking, anti-USA, useful idiot.
Tsk, tsk. Imho, that is.
Oh, and vote no….
To Ireland.
Thanks, thanks, thanks Ireland for voting NO.
About the Treaty of Lisbon, EU said every 18. countries votes yes! That isn’t the truth, because the Danish government wouldn’t let the Danes vote. Why not? We would vote no, as the Irish people.
A great kiss to the Irish no-voters from Janus, Copenhagen, Denmark
Sammy,
Sharpest analysis on this matter (and many others) in some time:
Mick ,
‘voting No when 24 other countries have already given it the nod is diplomatic suicide.’
Not just diplomatic . From getting what we wanted from the EU 90% of the time we’ll find ourselves getting it in the neck most of the time .
Sammy’s analysis is spot on. I’m ‘stunned’ that we have ‘forgotten’ how important the EU has been for our emergence from behind the British curtain these past 35 years .
We have laughed at the Unionist ‘NO’ sayers in the past. In the final analysis we have now out ‘NO’ed’ the Unionists . We have shot ourselves in the foot at a time in the economy and political history of the country when we need it least .
We have alas caught the ‘unionist’ disease
. One only has to look at the groups who pushed the NO vote- SF , ‘Libertas’ with dubious connections to US security contractors and neo cons , and the traditional religious nutters on the lunatic right wing of Catholicism to see where the NO’s have come from.
Given that the referendum was rejected by 26.5% of the total electorate (based on 53% of a 50% turnout) then it’s clear to me what Cowen must do . Embarassing though it will be he needs to put his political neck on the line by going back to the electorate after the summer . If the referendum is lost a second time he should resign and call a general election. He needs to have a plan before he goes to face the ‘music’ and not be seen to be told what to do by the EU.
I’m far from a big fan of the Lisbon Treaty also , but as you say some institutional reform needed to happen post-enlargement and it’s better than doing nothing.
The idea that Ireland alone can renegotiate the Lisbon Treaty is patent nonsense .
And of course Mr Brown and Co will be ratifying the Lisbon Treaty with much tut tutting to the major European partners such as the French and Germans etc about the ‘stubborn ‘ Irish
. Now you see what we’ve been up against.
Greenflag,
“Given that the referendum was rejected by 26.5% of the total electorate (based on 53% of a 50% turnout) then it’s clear to me what Cowen must do.”
My major issue with this was that there appeared to be a lack of respect for democracy in all this, especially the way the views of the Dutch and the Frence voters were sidelined.
A day after we vote no, we have the French, Germans and Barroso saying they will ignore the result and people like you going one step furter and saying the democratic will of the people is pretty much invalid.
A good few of my friends who voted yes are already so angry about the reaction that they said they wished they voted no.
The yes side weren’t in touch with the national mood before the referendum and your clear disregard for democratic process shows not only are you not in touch, you don’t care.
And you think this type of attitude will win people like me, who have always been yes to Europe but this time decided no, over to your side?
Does the EU have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within the territory covered by it? No. No mandate for force at all. Falls at the first hurdle of statehood then. My point was that the EU is nothing like the US. So it was a pointless comparison.
“A country with less than 1% if the EU population gets what it wants 90% of the time…” – Sammy Morse
Europe is a continent, not a country. We are citizens of a nation state, and not the citizens of a continent.
This comment is predicated on the curious delusion that it is legitimate for the sovereignty of a nation state to exercised by a parliament that is not accountable to the people of that nation state, and wherein the people of that nation state are granted 0.8% control over their own right to formulate laws and policy when they are entitled to 100% control as a nation state with a sovereign parliament.
Europe must remain a continent that is comprised of sovereign, democratic, territorial nation states wherein self-determination is exercised by the people of those nation states on behalf of the people of those nation states, and it must not be allowed to become a country (which is can only do at the direct expense of its member states).
Indeed, who but a braying jackass (such as Greenie) would advocate that a nation state transfers more of its democratic powers to an entity that has nothing but abject contempt for democratic process and for the democratically expressed will of the citizens of that nation state?
The people have spoken on the Lisbon Treaty, rejecting it. Others may not like that rejection, but if they refuse to accept the democratic will of the Irish people when they have declared that they would be bound by it, then let the other citizens of the nation states of the continent of Europe see exactly the might of tin pot fascists they are entrusting their democracy to. Those with eyes will see.
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