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At it Again: The Nuclear Option Saga Continues
Read more about: Lisbon Treaty
Perhaps in an attempt at balance, however it seems more like a dose of split-personality the Irish Times delivers the thousandth installment of the “nuclear option” saga. The softening up of public opinion for a second vote on Lisbon continues alongside the much-decried “soothing noises” of Michael Martin and others in Cabinet.
Again today Stephen Collins is urging them to simply go for it - not much of a surprise. But in the Weekend section a little more reality is present in a piece by Ruadhan Mac Cormaic. It asks the vital question that lurks beneath the nuclear option, “if we vote again, will you vote yes?”. The answers are mixed, many hedged but some are strident. For the most part, this non scientific glimpse suggests that the government would have to sell hard if they run again. And I cannot for the life of me think how this happens.
Yes they may come back with protocols, will they even look convincing? They can turn around and make us vote again but to do it with authority and legitimacy is a big ask - especially when they are calling emergency budgets and taking flak on all sides.
Its not just a nuclear option but it is one that could well confirm in the eyes of potential swing voters the accusations of elitism and detachment that lost the vote in the first place.
Cian,
The key problem for the Irish government is that the Lisbon Treaty is not open to renegotiation, at least not in the sense that other states that have already ratified the Treaty could go back to their peoples and parliaments and present a series of amendments simply to satisfy Ireland’s problems with the original package. Even if they were prepared to do so, if they tried it might prove very difficult and divisive in some member states, especially in countries where the ratificiation process already involved a substantial measure of ‘hold your nose and vote it through anyway’. Also, they may fear coming under pressure to secure some new concessions of their own - if Ireland can re-open the package, why not us?
Even if the rest of the EU was willing to renegotiate parts of the Treaty to accommodate Ireland’s rejection of Lisbon 1, there’s no guarantee that any revised package would make it through a second referendum here.
There’s almost no doubt but that the same groups and parties who campaigned for a ‘No’ the first time will inevitably stick to their ‘No’ position for a second run and any revised package will be described by them as woefully inadequate; even if it met every single criterion they had stipulated in their list of demands during the first referendum campaign. Many of the the ‘No’ groups have a much broader political agenda than simple obejctions to the contents of the Lisbon Treaty.
The next option for the government may be to secure a series of opt outs in particular areas, probably the same list of ‘concessions’ or assurances similar to those secured in the wake of the first rejection of Nice, on divorce, neutrality etc. The ‘No’ side will say there’s no renegotiation here and our basic requirements are not fulfilled by this shallow makey-up list of concessions. And they’ll be right. So they will campaign against the referendum as forcefully as against the first one. Wait for the “Don’t let them pull the Lisbon wool over your eyes” type slogans.
There’s also the possibility that a second vote based on opt outs, designed to confer the illusion that this is a different package, might lead to a drift among many previously ‘yes’ voters to he ‘no’ side for two reasons - first, a lot of ‘Yes’ people don’t like the idea of being forced to vote again, of having Lisbon rammed down their throats by the so-called European elite; and second, a revised package that includes opt outs for Ireland may be less attractive to some previously ‘yes’ voters than the original package. For example, if an opt- out on defence brought an end to Ireland’s long tradition in international peace-keeping, as has been suggested in some media analysis to date, that might pose a problem for some people. (I know it would for me. The so-called ‘triple lock’ secured after Nice 1 is bad enough and has made Ireland look ridiculous on more than one occasion, since we have to have UN approval on any and every mission in which our forces are involved, irrespective of the humanitarian merits of what is entailed.)
Similarly with any further ‘assurances’ in the areas of human and social rights to assuage the concerns of groups like Coir. Also, it’s hardly going to be in Ireland’s best interests if we opt out of important policy areas and have to sit outside Council meetings and have no input into discussions and decisions on these areas simply because there was a desire to make Lisbon Mark 2 look different to Lisbon Mark 1. In the long run, this might mean that standards in certain policy areas in Ireland might fall further below the European norm. Previous ‘yes’ voters would need to be assured that the law of unintended consequences - which would make Ireland’s relative position in the EU worse than better in the longer run - would not follow from any ‘cosmetic’ protocols designed simply to paint a new face on the Lisbon Treaty.
If, as the government commissioned research sugests, the main reason for voting ‘No’ was that most voters didn’t understand the Treaty, yet the vast majority still remain very strongly in favour of Ireland’s EU membership, then the option of taking the long hard road of getting out there and spelling out the facts to the electorate remains. But this time, politicians would actually have to campaign on the ground, not the docile efforts and hypocrisy that characterised their campaigning efforts in Lisbon 1. Personally, I don’t think this Oireachtas Committee route will yield much, at least not on its own. Nor will throwing more money at renewed efforts by the FOrum on Europe. The Forum, sadly, has had little or no impact on public opinion since it’s lamentably structured to provide just another talking shop opportunity for political parties and their hangers-on. Its terms of reference and engagement with the public would need to be significantly revised if it’s going to make any useful contribution to public debate on Europe and Lisbon in this country. But who’s going to face up to its failure and call for its remit and method of operation to be radically changed or the Forum itself abolished?
It might also be useful for the government and the ‘yes’ lobby to point out how much worse off Ireland and Europe will be under the provisions of the Nice Treaty rather than under Lisbon e.g. on the formula for achieving a reduction in the number of Commissioners or the cap on numbers of members of the European Parliament.
So we come to the option being plugged by the Irish Times, which is, I think, quite bizarre. You have to wonder where they are getting it from? The notion of breaking the Lisbon Treaty into bits, some of which will be voted through by the Oireacthas with the ‘leftovers’ consigned to a referendum of the people is politically unworkable. It’s also unbelievably arrogant, patronising and cowardly. For better or worse, we have chosen as a country to leave the final decision on ratification of major EU treaties to a referendum vote and I fear many voters would feel cheated and angry if Lisbon 2 was handled any differently.
I’ll leave it to others to tease out all the implications and the politics of it, but what happens if the leftover bits were rejected by a rightly outraged electorate? The consequences of the Stephen Collins’ strategy, if anyone was mad enough to follow it, would most likely be an impossible position on ratification of the Treaty as well as the break-up of the government and an even greater deepening of cynicism about politicians amongst the population, if that were even possible!
I think there is no easy political short cut to achieving a Yes vote in a second referendum. There is one further option though, which hasn’t been discussed much yet - a concession to Ireland in some area vital to our national interests at the present time outside the scope of the Treaty. A relaxation of the application of the SGP rules on the public finances perhaps? If the EU was perceived as taking a flexible approach and seeking to support us through our current difficult patch in a constructive way, then people might be more favourably disposed towards it and also more likely to accept it has some relevance to our day to day lives? Just an idea - I’m interested in what others might think along these lines.
In the end, I think there will have to be a multi-faceted approach to any second run on Lisbon and it will be interesting to see how events unfold in the coming months.
There is a too-clever-by-half aspect to the Autumn 2009 referendum. It’s timed so as not to hand Libertas a platform for the European Parliamentary elections by having the referendum in Spring. But Libertas can then just make part of their platform a demand that the government renounce any prospect of 2nd referendum. Since the government can’t to that, Libertas will just proclaim that the No vote is being ignored and that the only way to head it off is a huge vote for us in the parliamentary. Prospect of a huge protest vote — with a much larger base of people than the Iveagh House opinion poll.