The result of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was a triumph of popular sentiment over top down political pressure. With a relatively high turnout of 53%, the Irish electorate decisively rejected the Lisbon Treaty, by a majority of 53.4% to 46.6%. This result was achieved despite all political parties except Sinn Fein advocating a "yes" vote, supported by almost all the press, and most trades unions and business leaders and despite the fact that Ireland, unlike Britain which has had to bear huge burdens as a result of its EU membership, has done relatively well out of it. Post poll surveys have shown that the electorate knew all too well what it was voting about - Ireland's loss of power in Europe, loss of neutrality and lack of information about what the Lisbon Treaty really entailed. Among manual workers, who voted strongly against the Treaty, there were also resentment against recent European Court of Justice decisions in favour of employers and against worker's rights. The extent to which nearly all the Irish political parties were out of touch with their supporters is shown by a poll which indicated that 82% of those planning to vote No were supporters of Irish political parties which were in favour of the Treaty. The hysterical notion put about by one MEP that the opposition was "a toxic cocktail of anti-globalisers, neocons, the clergy and Trotskyists" turned out to be completely wrong. It was led by a successful entrepreneur who argued for economic liberalism alongside greater democracy, accountability and transparency in the EU.
Not surprisingly, in line with previous experience, the reaction of politicians across the EU was a contemptuous rejection of the result of the referendum in Ireland. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, elegantly expressed his view that "They (the Irish) are bloody fools. They have been stuffing their faces at Europe's expense for years and now they dump us in the s***." Valery d'Estaing, author of the Constitution on which, of course, the Lisbon Treaty was very largely based, said that "The Lisbon Treaty is not dead_ It is imperative that they vote again." Jean-Pierre Jouyet, French Europe Minister opined "I don't think you can say the Treaty of Lisbon is dead even if the ratification process will be delayed". Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German Foreign Minister said "I am convinced that we need this Treaty; therefore we are sticking with our goal for it to come into force. The ratification process must continue.". Wolfgang Schaeuble, German Interior Minister, took the view that "Of course we have to take the Irish referendum seriously. But a few million Irish cannot decide on behalf of 495 million Europeans." Jose Barroso, European Commission President, announced that "The Treaty is not dead. the Treaty is alive, and we will try to work to find a solution."
The reaction in Britain to the Irish referendum result was - unfortunately - on a par with that of the rest of the EU political classes. Instead of deciding not to proceed with ratification on the grounds that the Lisbon Treaty had failed to achieve the unanimous acceptance it required - or to have the referendum promised by all the major parties at the 2005 general election - the House of Lords blithely went ahead with its endorsement of the Treaty. The status and reputation of politicians is already at a low ebb. The craven and dishonest way in which so many of them welshed on their promises to the electorate to let the people express their views on the Lisbon Treaty - the original Constitution in all but name - did nothing to improve the low esteem in which they are held.
There is no doubt about what should happen to the Lisbon Treaty. It should be discarded. It was clear that the Irish were speaking for hundreds of millions of EU citizens who had not been allowed a vote. As French President Sarkozy acknowledged before the vote at a meeting with MEP group leaders: "France was just ahead of all other countries in voting No. It would happen in all member states if they have a referendum. There is a cleavage between peoples and governments." Legally, the position is crystal clear. EU treaties must be ratified unanimously. Each country ratifies a treaty on the assumption that all other countries will do so too. If one country says that it cannot ratify a treaty as it stands - in Ireland's case because the Irish people have rejected it - there is no point in the other countries proceeding. This is what the French and Dutch governments did when their voters rejected the EU Constitution in 2005. They told their EU colleagues that they could not put the same Treaty to their peoples again, so the remaining ratification process was abandoned.
If the EU elite is minded not to give up on the Lisbon Treaty - which very evidently is the position - there are essentially three ways in which they can proceed. One is to offer Ireland sufficient blandishments - combined with bullying a small state with a compliant political leadership - into holding another referendum in the hope that this will produce the result they want. Proposals which might upset the Irish, such as reducing agricultural protectionism in the Doha round are already being delayed. Apart from the utterly undemocratic process of only accepting votes if they go the way they are wanted to go, this is a high risk strategy for other reasons. The main one is that there might well be a second No vote as sentiment against the EU, far from being mollified, hardens to produce a possibly even more definite rejection of the Treaty. To head off this possibility, the second way ahead is for the EU to threaten Ireland with being pushed out of the EU or at least out of the EU mainstream. This kind of blackmail is also potentially risky which is why a third approach being discussed is to attach the more complicated proposals of the Lisbon Treaty to the forthcoming accession treaty for Croatia, while implementing the simpler ones through ordinary decision taking procedures. The French - who hold the presidency of the Union for the crucial second six months of 2008 - have signalled that many of the proposals in the Treaty, such as development of the EU diplomatic service, could be carried through by "discreet talks". The problem here is that proceeding in such an undemocratic way is not only producing highly adverse reactions among public opinion across the EU, it is also causing a number of key European leaders, particularly in Poland and the Czech Republic, to express their dissent. Any semblance of unanimity may thus be becoming harder and harder to achieve.
Hardly surprisingly, the disgraceful way in which the EU has reacted to the Irish vote on the Lisbon Treaty has done nothing to reverse the dwindling support for EU membership among the British electorate. A poll by YouGov for Open Europe carried out just after the Irish referendum showed that, by a margin of nearly four to one, those polled thought that the government should drop the Lisbon Treaty and not try to ratify it. Asked which of the following statements came closest to their own view, 29% said that "The UK should stay in the EU"; 38% said that "The UK should stay in the single market but pull out of the other political elements of the EU", while 24% said "The UK should leave the UK altogether". Open Europe's Downing Street petition calling on the government to respect the result of the Irish referendum and to abandon the attempt to ratify the Lisbon Treaty acquired 26,000 signatures in just one week, making it the second most popular petition on the website. It is clear from these figures that sentiment in favour of the EU in Britain is weakening to a point where increasingly there is becoming significant political mileage to be gained from one or more of the major political parties taking a much harder line than we have seen so far over Britain continuing to be an EU member, at least with anything like the present terms of membership.
It is important not to forget that the Irish referendum result is only the most recent of a long series of adverse votes against further EU integration. Almost whenever electorates have been allowed to express a view, it has been against the concept of a centralising European state. Danish voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, although they accepted it later after being given substantial concessions. The Swiss rejected EU membership by a large majority in 2001 as did Norway in both 1972 and 1994. Sweden rejected euro membership in 2002 and Ireland voted down Nice in 2001, only to be forced to vote again a year later to reverse the previous decision. The French and Dutch electorates voted down the proposed EU Constitution when referendums were held in 2005. No wonder EU leaders will do all they can to avoid any form of genuine democratic control intruding on their ambitions. They know from bitter experience that they simply do not have the support of their voters for what they do.
The big lesson to be learnt from the Irish referendum result is that the EU is manifestly not developing in the way in which people across Europe want to see it evolve. They do not want a European superstate. They do not want to see their national identities being submerged into a pan-European political entity. They strongly dislike the undemocratic nature of the EU with all the corruption that this inevitably brings in train. There are big majorities in favour of free trade and co-operation on a wide range of topics where joint action makes sense. There is no such majority for handing over wide ranging powers over every aspect of life to unelected Commissioners, central bankers and judges, weakly and ineffectively held to account by a European Parliament with none of the powers of a true democratic sovereign body whose critical characteristic is the power to make or break governments. The reality is surely that the more democracy in the European Union is undermined, and the more the wishes of its electorates are ignored or bypassed, the more support for the EU wanes and the more unstable and problematic its medium to long term future becomes.