Where Mary Lou McDonald gets it wrong on Lisbon.

In an article in the Irish Times, SF’s MEP for Dublin Mary Lou McDonald makes the case that the Lisbon referendum must not be rerun but that the Treaty must be renegotiated. The thing is she then goes on to make the same mistakes of overreach and presumption that the government did when campaigning for the treaty to be approved. What was rejected was the proposal to allow the Oireachtas sign up to Lisbon, not the content of the Treaty per se especially when so many citizens said they didn't understand it. Their response to vote No was in the circumstances quite sensible.

However, renegotiation requires that both parties are interested or able to do it. Mary Lou MacDonald argues that SF wanted the committee to look at “the future direction of the EU itself and how Ireland could shape that future”. I’m not sure how such an undertaking could possibly have reported back in any sort of realistic time frame and perhaps that was SF’s intent.

She states “There were also repeated attempts to scaremonger the public about the implications for the economy following the Irish people's rejection of the treaty. No evidence was presented to the committee to back up their claims.” The idea that the people’s rejection of the treaty has no implications for the economy is nonsense. If Brian Cowen had a bad flu, it would have implications for the economy for good or bad. That somehow our rejection of a EU treaty would have no consequences is complete overstatement of the position. Something she has rightly criticised elements of the Yes side for.

I do wonder at her suggestion about all the members of the public being given the chance to contribute in open session. It is unclear what ideas were not considered by the committee and what would have been the real value of every Tom, Dick and Harry having a chance to rant and rave at politicians on whatever their particular hobby horse, often only tangentially related to the EU is. “Sinn Féin also argued that the subcommittee should proactively engage as broad a section of the public as possible, that it should meet in open session, in and outside of Dublin, and listen to the opinions of ordinary citizens.” A halfway house idea that might have been worthwhile would have been to facilitate more engagement via the web, but the travelling road show idea as evidence by the Forum on Europe is past its best.

In talking about what needs to be addressed Mary Lou McDonald makes further missteps in saying about the report that it “sets out in detail the challenges facing Ireland and the EU and the mechanism for addressing the concerns of the Irish electorate on key issues such as maintaining our political strength, protecting neutrality, workers' rights, public services and taxation. It is clear that these issues can only be addressed in a new treaty which includes legally-binding protocols and not declarations of clarification which are not worth the paper they are written on.” There is nothing to suggest that all of the above must be addressed in order to win the support of the majority of the electorate. In a referendum all the government is required to do is gain the support of 50% plus 1 of the voters on the day. If they had adequately addressed the concerns of any one of the above issues they would probably have tipped the verdict from the vote last summer. The board scope of her argument that “...opinion polls,...demonstrate that people's concerns over neutrality, workers' rights, public services, democracy and Ireland's influence must be addressed in any future EU treaty” is also wholly incorrect.

She finishes by referring to our political goodwill with the EU while leaving aside the fact that much of this goodwill has dissipated in the aftermath of Lisbon. “It is time that the Government stood up for the interests of the Irish people and used the political goodwill which we have built up over many decades.” In essence the campaign strategy of SF and indeed Libertas was one giant blackjack hit, ignoring the possibility that we might be just as easily be bust as to hit 21.

As is her wont, she makes her point well, but doing it well does not in and of itself not make her point correct. Lastly, and of course, it is to be expected of me, given my own political leanings, to be saying this. It is quite poignant for a representative of SF to constantly refer to the democratic will of the people. It was the democratically expressed will of the people which they chose to ignore, election after election for 75 years, when it came to the republican movement’s campaign of violence which was supposedly in the name of the Irish people.

Prime Time turns its lens on Declan Ganley, burns self.

Well, that was one hell of a piece rubbish television especially compared to other investigative programs Prime Time have done in the past. The overall flavour was of the Rowdy Roddy Peeper segment in the Simpsons. Actors in shadows, dark moody music. I was half expecting a black and white clip with a damsel laid out on a train track with some high tempo piano tinkling going on in the background to surface but it didn't.

A couple of weird things did strike me during the course of it though. Katie Hannon told us the wife of the man murdered in Albania told her stuff but wouldn't do it on camera (don't they have the blurry face thing anymore) but we were lead to believe she was fine with Hannon standing outside her house quoting her, not even to voice record her? And we're to take Hannon's word for it that the wife actually said X Y or Z. That's very strange for an investigative program. Usually if you can't get something on the record then it simply isn't used. Whither Woodward and Bernstein.

Ganley also made reference in the program to a phone conversation that Katie had had with the former junior Latvian minister and which the minister (now forester! how exciting) also said that he wouldn't be adding to when she went to visit him but we didn't get to hear any of that phone conversation. Why was that? What was the content of it? Was it any cop? And yet she played a recording of a conversation in the guys office. I take it she recorded that legally, I mean some countries do allow you to record your own conversations, others require the permission of both parties. In some places you can only do it in a public place in others it is ok to enter someone's home or place of work and record without their knowledge. I presume RTe confirmed what the situation is in Latvia and I can only presume that is why couldn't she try to do the same in Albania? Or did they simply make an editorial choice.

Over the course of the show a lot was made of claims by people that claims by Ganley had been overplayed or that people's roles were more than they actually were. So while it was possible that Ganley had overstated his role in Latvia but it wasn't apparently possible that the person in Albania had overstated their role in Anglo-Adriatic or that others were overstating it now. The Albania voucher scheme sounded like all kinds of interesting weirdness but despite this tease we magically didn't get any concrete detail on what happened. We seem to have been told that the state gave out vouchers which were to be linked to priviatised state assets and Anglo Adriatic collected these vouchers but then the state didn't honour them and along the way people started trading in the vouchers. But was Anglo Adriatic involve in that trading? RTe never said, nor were we given to understand why Anglo-Adriatic were even collecting them or were they buying them? The picture presented was as clear as soft-focus image taken by someone with a shakey hand of a murky lake waters, at dusk, in winter, in Lapland.

So the view from the show is that Declan Ganley embellished his role in advising the Latvia government at some point in the early 90s and that some people lost money on some strange voucher scheme in Albania used to privatise, and that his company may have engaged in overreach in contract negotiations with the US CPA in Iraq.

Now I wouldn't personally be inclined to become too involved in business dealings with Mr. Ganley simply because he strikes me as too much of a shrewd operator and Kerryman that I am, we know a hoor that's too cute for us.

Overall, the program gave us nothing you could call concrete or a smoking gun, only rumours and impressions. If this is something that RTe is doing to assist in securing a Yes vote next time (something I would on balance like to see) then God help us all.

As for the talk of the Standards in Public Office. The current SIPO set up doesn't give you any real idea where the money for the major parties comes from as they simply work around it with small donations. People should read some of Elaine Byrne's articles in the IT to see what I'm talking about. There may well be questions from SIPO for Libertas to answer about funding but the question is why would Libertas be expected to provide this information ahead of all other organisations that campaigned for/against the Treaty. One can only presume that Coir and the Alliance for Europe have gotten similar letters at the same time that Libertas did or has Libertas been singled out?

Update: it now appears that Libertas are saying they have not yet received the letter that RTe showed as coming SIPO. Where did RTe get it from?

Lisbon:Lisboa - where do we go from here?

Two quick thoughts

One, if other EU members states decide to bully us then I think we should remind them that the EU was founded on the principle of equality amongst member states and we should be prepared to veto stuff up and down the agenda if they want to play the heavies. And we should be prepared to reach out to other members states in the event that some seek to move ahead.

Two, regarding funding and air time for referenda, is it possible that the government is concerned about having the referendum on children's rights because they would have to give air time to people who hate children? I mean the rules aren't that stupid that if we had a referendum on the age of consent that we should have to give time and money to those who would argue for no age of consent at all? Are they?

Where is Brian Cowen?

We've had Eamon, Enda, Patricia, Mary Lou everyone on the box but not a sign of Brian. Will he only appear once it is all over? Is he Royston Brady Mark II, won't come to see the voting if it is against him?

The PDs must be spitting

It is only a minor outcome of the referendum but the Progressive Democrats must be spitting that they didn't go with the No argument. There again the YES side might have won then.

Lisbon:Lisboa - the aftermath Part 1

It’s likely we're going to be picking over the consequences and causes of the treaty defeat for weeks perhaps even months. I’m going to have a quick start here but no doubt I’ll revisit it in more detail and with better grammar over the coming weeks. I voted YES in the end and not with any great enthusiasm. I suspect that now that while the remaining EU member states will continue with their own ratification processes that the reforms in Lisbon are dead. If the EU tries to press on without us then I think we should look to establish a new relationship with the Union I suspect other members states may in time wish to take this new Irish option.

I believe there are a number of questions to be asked from the outset.

Was the Lisbon Treaty lost from Day One? Or perhaps even before Day One?

Decisions on important matters such as voting for treaties, international agreements or sending out for food seem to happen in a particular order in the minds of most people. We have a need to answer certain questions in our heads before embarking on any process or journey and while we don’t have to commit to any one single answer before proceeding to the next question we do need something to build on.

Why are we doing this is the most basic question of all in my view. In the absence of a why we can’t proceed. Once we’ve a working idea of why we’re doing something we can move on to the more specific, almost mechanistic problems, of what and how are we going to do this, and then finally there are the more mundane matters of where and when are we going to be doing this.

Take getting married - you want to marry someone because you love them (there’s the why) and you have to ask them and convince them it’s a good idea (what and how) and the where and when of the marriage itself you should probably seek to work out together or just go along with their ideas for the sake of a quiet life.

Coming back to Lisbon, the government never explained ‘Why’ of we were inviting this treaty in for tea at all. They skipped that step and my belief is that the core lesson of Nice II was that if people were participating in the process they would support complex compromises involved but if they are presented with them as fait accompli then they will refuse to own them. To my mind, the seeds of the loss were sown even before the Treaty was signed. In the lead up to summit there was no significant advance trailing that. Sure the politically involved knew there was something afoot but the regular joe schmoe in the pub didn’t know about it and when the government came home with the legalistic version of Jack’s Magic Beans the public were suitably unimpressed. “You brought home wha now?”

I think the real seeds of defeat lie in the manner of the negotiation and signing of the treaty itself and these factors subsequently fostered the growth of the No argument more than the Yes side. In essence the Yes side lacked a convincing enough narrative as to why we had the treaty at all, not to mind being able to argue about or explain the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the content the document. In some sense, there wasn't a good enough origin myth to the Lisbon Treaty.

I've used Jack and the beanstalk comparison already but it stands repeating. The government never outlined in advance the WHY before it signed up to Lisbon which thereafter made the WHAT and HOW that much more difficult to convince people of. The vast majority of people don't spent their time wrapped up in political matters, they have jobs to do, children to put to bed, shopping to get, cars to drive and so on. So from the moment the Treaty was signed they were wondering ‘why are we doing this?’ And in the vacuum that existed the No side were able to decide the ground on which the battle would be fought and because it took so long to get going the YES side turned up like a bedraggled and uncoordinated army to be picked off piece by piece by the various No factions.

As for the campaign itself did the Yes side lose it or did the No side win it?

Let's be honest here all the protocols in the world don't convince the voting public when we've got a government addicted to taking a mandate to do X and going off and doing Y instead. They stated quite baldly that we wouldn’t be joining the Battle groups arrangement without a referendum, whether you agree with the decision or not that seems like bad faith. And since the general election we’ve been repeated told that the result really being a referendum on believing Bertie’s account of his financial accounts. I’m 100% certain that option of believing him or not simply wasn’t on the ballot and the general the population are equally certain of that too. People are just plumb tired of voting for one thing and getting another. So all the promises in the world that article such and such will protect concern A or B didn't wash. Working from the premise that this was just another great thing brought to you by the people they couldn’t explain their finances and told you that the economy was just dandy stretched people's credibility.

The wrong tone overall- The fact is the government used tactics that were suitable if the mood music was inclined to dance with the Yes side when in fact they were wary to start with and instead of those concerns being treated as genuine (even if not necessarily always based on fact or reality) they decided to mark everyone inclined toward No as being crazy and hope that the sensible people would be scared off from associating with the No side. There is a thin enough line between persistence and harassment.

The wrong pitch on specific issues - The discussion on the commission was a classic of the type, the argument about why the commission needed to be reduced was taken as read by the body politic, and the win for Ireland and smaller states that all being treated equally wasn't highlighted from the start. Other alternatives proposals such as a permanent commissioner for the large states with rotation for the smaller ones were never teased out in public.

The absence of the personal touch - I wonder to what extent the campaigning on the ground (or the apparent lack of it in many areas) by various party representatives had an impact. And the extent to which all political parties have become dependent on the personal armies of the local representative of the political pyramid to do the footwork. And many reps may have decided there was nothing directly in it for them, and so they didn't have their feet on the gas to the same extent. They were happy to have few posters but they tested the temperature of the water and decided they didn’t want to leave themselves on the losing side. I'm aware of a strong local campaign in a few areas and I can see that swung the vote in what was not fantastically fertile territory. However in other areas there was no local campaign.

Parties do not talk only to their own supporters or just to their own members. If the defeat is 55/45 as seems likely and with a turnout around 50% then I can't see how FF can claim that their supporters voted YES but that it was all down to the fault of others.

I voiced my concerns a good while ago about the mood of the electorate, and the likelihood that many people wanted to give the government a slap. I was sadly proved right in that regard.

Lisbon:Lisboa - holding my nose and voting...

It's not a bad treaty, it's also not a very good treaty. I don't hate it, I don't much love it either. Yet I've got to have an opinion on it and I've got to vote. So what to do, well I suppose I should go over some of the basic arguments in my head.

It's long and complex: Yeah so what? Do you think a legal document should be written in baby speak? Or on the back of a cereal box?

You don't know anything about it: Then read it, Ok I read it. Perhaps I skimmed most of it. But I got the gist of it. (we're the good guys right?)

You don't understand it, then find someone you trust and listen to what they have to say on it and then think some more about it yourself.

So, where does that leave me? Blurry eyed and owing people pints.

There are specific things I don't like about it. The absence of a commissioner for 5 out of 15 years is one. I think my own proposals on a rotating commission with seniors and juniors would be more workable that the idea of reducing to 2/3 (after all we could be back up to mid twenties commissioners inside of 10/20 years). That said, there may be other better ideas, the problem is that we didn't hear about them in advance and make a judgement on what we liked or disliked.

I think the lack of engagement by the government of the day with the public prior to setting off to negotiate the treaty was a mistake, bringing this sheaf of paper home like it was Jack's Magic Beans is so 19th century.


Gov: "Look we signed a new treaty isn't it great!"
Voters: "I thought you were going out to get milk and sell the cow?"


We're getting a President of the EU sure but it is not a US style president who gets to declare war and do things on his own. Rather it is one who is there to provide continuity between the Presidencies of the circus that moves around from country to country every 6 months and who does what he is told by the heads of the member states. Less of a President and more of a butler with travel privileges.

And as for the foreign minister, we've had Javier Solano wandering the world the last few years and he's not exactly embarrassed us by setting off fire alarms in buildings or nuking Pakistan.

I think there is a basic contradiction in the no argument about democracy when they talk about QMV and how awful it is that larger countries with more voters get a bigger say than we do. Democracy is all about giving those with more votes, more influence.

And then it comes down to this. Last night's Q&A was useful in demonstrating that there is no Plan B for us, rejecting the treaty because we might get something better is not a sensible option. We could actually get something worse and the li(n)e from Mary Lou MacDonald that she believes the government capable of getting a better deal next time when she doesn't believe they were competent to get an even passably good deal in the first place. Doubling up might be the way she rolls but there is a time to cash in your chips and sometimes that is when you're way up, and sometimes it is just when you're marginally ahead. Also, with their excessive tales of woe the No side lost me last night because if they're seeing all these things that obviously aren't there then maybe the more plausible things aren't there either or simply aren't as solvable as they claim. That said, many serious and genuine issues have been highlighted during this campaign and I hope to God that we learn or relearn in some cases the lessons of Nice I which were that public engagement during the process is as important as the last 3/4 weeks of the campaign.

A key point for me was the impression from the No side that we would be just renegotiating with the EU as an entity, when in fact with Lisbon dead, it would be all 27 member states negotiating with each other and God knows where that will lead us. I don't much like this treaty but I can live with it. The idea that we should say No just so as to spin the wheel again in the hope that we might get something better is fine for members of gamblers anonymous but is irresponsible in grown political leaders.

See the point is this, there are aspect of the Treaty I don't like and there are aspects you probably don't like but the areas I would change you might leave the same and the things you would change I would be loath to touch. So we end up with some middle ground document that we all can live with and that is what this treaty is. It's not exactly what we wanted but when do you get that when you're an adult?

So I'm not crazy about this treaty but rejecting it because it ain't perfect doesn't make much sense. Do I think we could have done better? Yes! Do I think that by voting No we will on the balance of probability get a better deal afterwards? No! For that reason, I'm voting Yes.

Voting on Lisbon - update 3

So we've had two polls and a deal with the IFA and a "don't be chancing your arm" for SIPTU since the last post. I would rate things as YES - 53% NO 47% with a turnout in the range of 43 -46%.

Which doesn't seem a great shift since the last post I agree, but it seems to me that the positions are, as one would expect with less than one week to go, hardening. And the hardening of positions means that the possibilities for further advances are reduced. The first poll from TNS-MRBI will have spooked the horses a good bit not only in the body politic but in the main body of the electorate who were most likely thinking of staying home and doing a bit of work in the garden come Thursday. And the 2nd poll will have will have both increased that spookage but also reaffirmed that the cause was not lost for the Yes side. That voting can make a difference. The prospect of a close poll is usually like a rouge handkerchief to the voters. So I suspect polling could bob over the 45% mark and with that bring the Yes side home and dry. Yet only just, and it will be interesting to see the regional differences and to try and interpret what they may mean for future votes and the elections scheduled for next year.

I probably do a final one of these on voting day and if I'm honest a post mortem or two.

As many FF Voters as FG are opposed to the Lisbon Treaty

From the poll in last weekend's Business Post a rather basic fact appears to have been overlooked which is that as many FF people as FG people have yet to be convinced of the merits of the Treaty.

Quoting from the Post article. "The intensive campaigning by the new Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who has risked his political honeymoon on the success of the referendum, is bearing fruit with Fianna Fáil voters who now favour the treaty by a huge margin. For the first time, an absolute majority of Fianna Fáil voters say they will support the treaty.

However, despite an active Fine Gael campaign and the appeal by party leader Enda Kenny to ‘‘put the country first’’, Fine Gael voters are evenly divided between the Yes and No side. This may be explained by many voters identifying the referendum as a proposal from the government and, therefore, something to be opposed."

The full report as posted by RED C

So FG support is supposedly 28% and FF is on 40%, and we heard that FG is evenly divided on the subject while an "absolute majority" of FFers are supportive of the treaty which I believe we are to take to mean 50%+1 of the FF support meaning 20% of the electorate. Allowing for the same amount of undecided voters within FF and FG and the general electorate which is 25%. So we get

FF 40%, of which 20% Yes, 10% undecided, 10% No.
FG 28% of which 10.5% Yes, 7% undecided, and 10.5% No.

Since this is a poll, and we're dealing with a margin of error of +/- 3%, I think it is reasonable to suggest that An Taoiseach Brian Cowen has as many of his own supporters to convince to not vote No as does FG. And he actually has more voters in total to win over than does FG.

After all when you go into the polling station a single FG vote is worth no more that a single FF vote.

Voting on Lisbon - update 1

After the weekend that was in it, the comments from Brian Cowen, and the mood music coming from the IFA, I would judge that the No vote has breached the 40% barrier and then some, I would even put it as high as 43%. Why?

Well, Cowen has probably with a single comment made a percentage of people from an Fine Gael inclined background decide that they can't be bothered to come out and vote for what they now see as his effing Treaty. It's not a very sensible attitude but it is entirely understandable. This may back to more difficult to

The IFA seem to be itchy for a fight and could talk themselves into a corner that they could only be got out of by Cowen going 12 rounds with Mandelsohn live on telly.

I would rate the Yes vote at 55% and the remainder spoiled - we're going to see a quare amount of spoiled votes in my humble opinion, over 2%.

Shifting the blame so early

I’ve read some attempts to shift the blame for failure in my time but rarely so far in advance of the end of the contest. Noel Whelan’s column, Irish Times May 24^th, followed so closely by the comments from Brian Cowen that the onus for the success of the Lisbon Treaty was on Fine Gael rather than the government of the day has to take the proverbial biscuit.

Let us recall that the main government party spent much of the time it could have spent addressing concerns about the Treaty conducting a swansong for its outgoing leader, while telling anyone who had concerns that they were lulus who were only interested in making a holy show of us by voting no and just stopped short of sending them to bed without their supper.

If the government were serious from the outset about meeting head on the genuine qualms that many people had expressed they would have selected someone other than a man who would cause Americans to harbour doubts about the loveliness of their mothers and the tastiness of apple pie. The smug condescension from the junior minister with special responsibility for European Affairs can have convinced few floaters to choose the ‘Yes’ side.

In terms the Taoiseach might be more familiar with, his comments are like those of a player who never turns up for training, and upon coming back from suspension for ungentlemanly conduct enters onto the field of play at the county final with ten minutes left. He then demands rather then asks that all those who have been there from the start of the championship must dig deep, give 110% and sweat blood all the while he has yet to kick a ball in anger. With ‘encouragement’ to the Yes side like this, does the No side require any more help?

Voting on Lisbon

I'm going to give the feelings in my water expression over the next few weeks as we close in judgement day for the Treaty of Lisboa - June 12th.

As of now I would suggest the support levels of

Yes 60% No 38% Spoilt 2%