The Lisbon Treaty will be pushed through by stealth

The strength of a vociferous ‘No’ campaign means Ireland’s Taoiseach and the rest of the EU cannot risk another referendum

FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Ever since Ireland voted against the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty, the EU has been clamouring for a second referendum. The trouble is that the risks and gains for the Irish Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, are asymmetrical. If he held the vote and won, he'd be slightly better off. But if he lost, he'd have to resign, and would go down in history as the Taoiseach who wouldn't take "No" for an answer.

In other words, it wouldn't be enough for Cowen to think that he would win; he'd have to know. And, given the way the "No" campaign has come from behind in every recent Euro-referendum, it's hard to see how he could ever be certain.

How, then, will the Eurocrats get their treaty? By a combination of parliamentary ratification, executive fiat and judicial activism. Chunks of the Lisbon Treaty will be unanimously decreed by the 27 governments to be in force, without any formal treaty changes.

The Eurocrats will get their treaty by executive fiat and judicial activism

Indeed, to a large extent, this has already happened. The EU foreign policy is up and running, the Charter of Fundamental Rights has been declared to be justiciable, the flag and anthem are being treated as official emblems and most of the institutions that would have been created by the constitution - the European Human Rights Agency, the External Borders Agency, the Armaments Agency and so on - have been established anyway.

The new rules on the number of MEPs and Commissioners will be tacked on to the Croatian accession treaty and pushed through without a referendum. Ireland holds plebiscites on EU treaties, not because of an integral part of the 1937 constitution, but as a result of a 1987 court judgment, which the best legal minds in Dublin are now working to circumvent. In short, the Lisbon Treaty won't be ratified, just implemented. You read it here first.

FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 6, 2008

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Being a Con Mep must be a terrible drawback. After all, just by appearing at the EU parliament building and signing in gets you a couple of hundred pounds for no work what so ever - Just ask Struan Stevenson MEP caught memorably on TV after slagging off other MEP's for doing the same thing. But, a Con MEP does what one does best, distorting any truth if Diddy Cameron demands it, announcing any untruth as the worst thing that has ever happened in the universe, having to join any old right wing facist allignment 'cos nobody else will have them, and claiming all expenses if you have or not worked for them. Let us all shed crocodile tears for the Con MEP's, and just wish we were paid with as such generous allowances as they can get away with while announcing their own incompetences. But to get back onto the Lisbon Treaty, to misquote Churchill -"Never in the field of human endeavour, have such a few lied to so many". The lies about the Lisbon Treaty by the Few to the many who never, or had a chance to read it is probably one of the most dishonourable and typically right wing actions against anything that might effect the power they have in keeping the legitimate and elected powers in their control. But what can you expect from a party when the top "shadow cabinet" is made up of men who have inherited their wealth. I have read the Lisbon Treaty, and I have never read such an innocuous piece of work. Compared to the the Maastricht Treaty, signed by Margaret Thatcher, and infamously not read by her Chancelor, the Lisbon Treaty is like a sand castle compared to the Bastille. Read and compare the two. then look at the incompetents of the Con Party and see what they are saying, but then again, it is so easy to belive that the journalists who have written their articles have actually researched them, and not written their pieces just on the PR releases from Con HQ.

Posted by Rhuadgh at 9:04pm on November 6, 2008