The other side of Lisbon

Published on 1 October 2009 at 07:47

In Catholic societies, bible study is discouraged as a species of Protestant intellectualism. It’s almost inevitable therefore that in holy Ireland the government of Brian Cowen and associated “business leaders” with their “assertive” campaign have not promoted any close readings of the Lisbon Treaty lest the electorate be led astray by their own minds. Failure to say yes shall lead the EU to break off into two lumps one faster than the other and the ECB shall rethink of financial aid to the struggling Irish economy. This is like unto the priests threatening perpetual darkness if the faith is not properly embraced.

Even when they tire of dark prophecies as how we shall be written out of the book of the EU, Lisbonites on a less apocalyptic note assert that 35 years of membership have been good for us. A fair point, but by doing so they are suggesting that on Friday we are being asked to accept or decline membership of the union. This either reflects that they have so internalised the systematic bullying and isolating manoeuvres enacted against Ireland, and now on the Czech Republic, that they believe this to be the case. Else they are just being manipulative. The vote, it must be remembered, is on the Treaty alone. To suggest otherwise, as a priest might say, is immoral.

The soberest defenders of the Lisbon faith say that it streamlines EU institutions, gives some powers to the Strasbourg parliament in exchange for concessions on national sovereignty, creates a single five year EU president and High Representative on Foreign Affairs. But it seems amazing to this ardent Euro-federalist that 269 pages of post-modern meta-text on a far longer EU constitution, are necessary to frame such simple and agreeable notions.

This is not to accept the anti-Lisbonites who clamour that there is a hidden agenda. What unites all aspects of the No campaign is how they systematically project onto the treaty their own prejudices and fears. For Coir who, among other things, seek to defend Ireland’s absurd anti-abortion laws, modernity is the problem. Their quaint parochialism is not quite as dispiriting, however, as that of Ireland’s left, with Sinn Féin and MEP Joe O’Higgins in the forefront, claiming that Lisbon compromises our sham neutrality and that ratification is a green light for a neo-liberal free for all. It should be clear to anyone that Yes or No the neo-liberal spree will do fine regardless. The continued destruction of health and education services and the decline in living standards is not dependent on Lisbon. It is merely a symptom that the ideological battles of the 1970’s are lost and that the post-war welfare state consensus is dead. Nothing less than a complete rethink as to how to and who should control the means of production is needed to save the left from extinction in the next generation. By opportunistically opposing the Lisbon Treaty, Sinn Féin and other socialist movements are merely postponing yet again that moment of reckoning.

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For anyone not sufficiently demoralised by the elisions and nonsense emitted from both Yes and No camps, they might nevertheless do well to hark to those Irish lawyers, as reports the Irish Times, who have stated the following : “Public opinion in the EU states has not been able to arrive at an informed view on the merits of the treaty because of the way in which it was written. Even to us, as lawyers accustomed to dealing with abstruse documents, the treaty as signed is well-nigh unreadable.” If lawyers cannot “read” the abtruse Lisbon Treaty, then it should be obvious, in Charlie McCreevy words, that no “sane people” can either. There may be a certain Lisbon fatigue that has crept in these last few months, which gives rise to a certain curiousity to find out what is on the other side of Lisbon, since in all probability things could hardly be worse than now. If there is one thing, however, that the Catholic Church in its mostly awful history has bequeathed us, it is the importance and the primacy of the word. It is for this reason that the Lisbon Treaty, which consists of words made of clouds and words of weasels, should be rejected.

Gerry Feehily

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