The winds of change

Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin is in charge of the Lisbon II campaign.  With summer schools apparently forming the main forum for policy debate with the Dail in recess, he was perhaps giving us a preview of what the Yes campaign will look like in this evening’s remarks to the MacGill event.  Writing as someone whose preferred outcome is a Yes vote, if this is all he’s got, we’re in deep trouble. 

The argument is that we have to vote Yes to reassure foreign investors –

“It is in our self interest that that we send an emphatic message that will serve to eliminate the doubts that linger in the boardrooms of the multinational corporations that have underpinned our economic development.  “When we go to the polls on 2nd of October we need to consider what signal we are sending to the people in places like Mountain View and Cupertino in California, to companies who have put their trust in Irish workers and Irish know-how,” he said.

While there is an economic logic to this, it comes across as tone-deaf.  In the midst of a global financial crisis that was produced by decisions made in corporate boardrooms, is this really the time to be telling people that they have to vote a particular way to reassure the suits?  If you don’t do it for yourself or your families, do it for the venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road?

And there was a lot of this stuff –

These companies did not come here because they like our climate, but because we are seen as a country that is fully plugged into the European Union. It would be unwise to give them any reason to think otherwise.

Well, that was one reason, but being a low-cost location was another, and Martin’s speech came on the day that Element Six (the former de Beers industrial diamonds) announced that they were pulling the plug on most of their Shannon operation (clearly their earlier concerns about the withdrawal of Shannon-Heathrow was just one aspect of their concerns about operating in Ireland).  And then there’s yesterday’s bad news from Leixlip regarding Intel, which doesn’t sound like it had much to do with the non-ratification of Lisbon.  The best he can do with this sales pitch is that we have to rely on foreign boardrooms because Lord knows the banking crisis shows that we can’t rely on our own, but that might be too much even for the jaded Irish voters. 

So perhaps MacGill was just a kite for some pro-Lisbon messages.  This one hit the ground straight away.