The only sane comment above has been Tony’s. I come to the discussion from the other side. I would have voted for the Treaty if I hadn’t been halfway around the world. (I also would have put a substantial bet on, which as it turned out I was certain to win. Foolishly, the bookies began paying out on “Yes” bets when it became clear turnout was relatively high; in other words, they wound up everybody who had a betting slip regardless of what was written on it.) But Tony is quite right that the doom and gloom merchants on both sides of the debate did nothing but discredit themselves. People didn’t vote “no” because Declan Gormly or Gerry Adams told them to–though the spectacle of a home-grown George Soros using his megabucks to have public policy shaped to his liking is a worrying one–but for the good and simple reasons that they couldn’t see what was in it for Ireland. Whether or not it would have led to the EU vetoing our corporate tax rate, changing or abortion laws or merely conferring on the big powers even more influence than they have now, it could plausibly be argued that all of those things, none of which the Irish people want, were more likely if it passed. There was little or nothing presented to the electorate by way of corresponding advantages. Irish people have been, and remain, thoroughly Europhile, but they do not feel any duty to worsen their own lives so as to make the EU function more smoothly. That is not an irrational or disreputable stance. Quite the contrary.
There’s no need, then, for anyone to get excessively excited. The European project has not been killed by this vote; the EU will continue to jog along quite nicely. Foaming-at-the-mouth Eurosceptics who see this result as a foreshadowing of the kind of referendum on withdrawal from the EU that they would love to have are deluding themselves. And even though my “side” lost, I don’t think it at all a bad thing that the technocrats have had their leash jerked a little by the voters. If there *is* a larger lesson from this episode, it’s the same as in 2001 and 2005: the “Monnet model” of policy wonks coming up with very complicated proposals when they then present to the electorate and say “trust us; it’s the right thing to do” has run its course. Since at least the Maastricht Treaty, it has needed to persuade ordinary people that what it wanted was indeed the right thing. It hasn’t yet done so. And as the fate of Nice and now Lisbon has shown, it won’t get very much further until it does.
