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Why we voted no and why they wish we voted no.
Read more about: Lisbon Treaty
David Miliband early today said
[Reports the British favour changing the treaty and forcing a second vote] were “not true” and said there were “relevant points” that the Irish government had to have time to address - as many of the issues raised by the “no campaign” in Ireland, such as abortion and conscription, “didn’t have anything to do with” the treaty
“Ireland’s debate focused on abortion, euthanasia …, taxation, the WTO, agriculture.
Lisbon was rejected for sins it could not possibly have committed; whatever critics said, it did not change the position on abortion, tax harmonisation and Irish neutrality.
Now if they had listened to us they would know Abortion and all similar issues were non-issues. Yet listening to Sarkozy and Miliband you would think that we were some arch-conservative country ok perhaps we are but it was not the reason for the no vote as the EU barometer shows.
The reason to have people believe that this is the case is simple. By demonising the Irish by making it seem that we voted no due to crazy reasons then it makes it easier to justify it. “Oh the silly Irish conservatives thought we were going to stop, stopping abortion.” Hoping or maybe succeeding in making people think there is nothing wrong with the Lisbon treaty only the Irish people. I am sure this spin will continue with abortion being sighted as a major cause of the No vote as it is an easy spin.
there is no mistake being made here i think. Its nicer to talk aboiut abortion and euthanisia and conscription than saying Ireland doesn’t like this crap deal but the rest of us [big countries] do. i think we’ll get given a fixed commissioner, the promise that the common tax base is alive but not kickin(for the moment) and gurantees on abortion, euthanisia and conscription. That way it looks like europe bent over backwards to meet our concerns and when we get told this is a in our out vote we will all be expected to vote yes and we probably will because otherwise everybody really will think we are a shower of bastards. Nothing will have changed in the treaty but we will have been backed into a corner irregardless.
if it were not to be so serious the second time i would love to see a no vote just to prove that abortion amd euthanasia and conscription are not issues. Ireland is about to be ridden and hard.
Milliband and Sarkozy may be wrong, but I don’t think they’re as wrong as you think.
Taxation was pretty important in the debate. And as for abortion, euthanasia and the like, while relatively few people would have voted “no” for fear of the introduction of these things, the fact is that the “no” groups that preyed on peoples fears around these issues helped to create an atmosphere of confusion. The broadcast media in particular treated these arguments with a respect not due to them. Given the margin of victory achieved by the “no” campaign and the significance of the “I don’t know, so I’m voting no” crowd to that victory, it’s probably fair to say that arguments about these issues played a very important part in bringing about a “no” victory, even if the vast majority of people believed that these arguments were probably baseless.
If the government wants a “Yes” victory in a second referendum, then all it needs to do is convince the public at large that the treaty will not have a negative impact on our supposed neutrality, our tax situation, our ability to decide our own laws in regards to who has a right to life/death and our ability to decide on other issues like prostitution and gay marriage for ourselves.