Let's Have A Mature Debate About Europe

Oh no, not again. The oul’ heart sank when I heard the news that another referendum is to be held. Despite the assurance that it’s to ratify the so-called fiscal compact and that what it’s really about is a promise to keep our government spending under control, we’re liable to have months of turmoil and nonsense and lots of people riding their high horses about everything but the issue…

There is no denying the pain caused by the austerity programme that has been imposed on Ireland. There is a significant issue in relation to our sovereignty, arising from the involvement of the troika in our financial affairs. And there’s the embarrassment of hearing that a European Commission report on the Irish economy was revealed to the German Bundestag – warning that further slowdown could mean further “fiscal tightening” and delay our return to the financial markets – before it had been discussed by the Dáil.
There is an understandable rage that senior bondholders have not been hit, and hard. They took a punt on very dodgy deals offered by Anglo-Irish Bank and lost – why should we pay? On the other hand, there are concerns that the country’s finances have become so wildly out of kilter that remedial action is needed.
There are very many legitimate and sometimes contradictory concerns about where we are and how it is being addressed. But they are unlikely to be discussed rationally.
So lt us set down a marker here: it’s important that everyone is clear as to what the referendum is actually about. They should vote on that and not on the issue of austerity itself, or on bin charges, septic tank charges, property tax, cutbacks, paybacks or any other bleedin’ axe they might have to grind.
The idea that we can reject a treaty and return for a better deal is deeply embedded at this stage. Very few seem to have grasped that it’s different this time. This isn’t a going-back-for-a-better-deal-scenario. This is to do with whether you’re in or out. And those who are in – the majority of the Eurozone – are going ahead anyway, with or without us.
Those who argue that we should go it alone need to be challenged with the fundamental question: if we vote no, how are we to raise money on the financial markets? Their response may well be that they don’t want the EU in running our affairs.
Okay, let’s make it even simpler: who do you prefer to borrow from, the financial markets or the European Central Bank? Is our future in Europe or in isolation (or, even, back in the Commonwealth?) These are reltively simple choices. There are no others. Not even fracking the whole of Leitrim would bring in enough to keep the hospitals and schools running, capiche?
The ECB we know and can understand. The markets are far, far beyond our capacity to influence. Only a madman would suggest that we might be better off borrowing from the markets for the foreseeable future.
None of which is to say that bondholders shouldn’t share – or have been left with – the burden of debt. Of course they should. But that doesn’t mean burning down the house now, just to show that we can.
No, right now the major worry is that we will get sucked into one of those really stupid Irish black holes, where the referendum is used as an opportunity to talk about everything that gives us a pain in the ass – everything, that is, except what the referendum is about.
In this, there’s another complication. It’s to do with balance. Media coverage of issues, and this includes referenda, is supposed to be fair and balanced. But what’s fair? And what’s balance?
Well, mostly, the media interprets balance as opponent Vs. opponent. You’re for, she or he’s agin, that’s balance. You’re in the news for some reason, they find someone who disagrees with you, put ‘em together, that’s a thousand words or four minutes, job done.
But that is far too reductive. In the context of referenda, where quite often the vast majority of political parties and Dáil deputies are in agreement, it can distort the shape of the debate. What happens is that the media allocate coverage according to whether people and parties are for or against the proposal, that is to say, 50/50 for/against rather than on a representational basis.
This rather devalues parliamentary representation and greatly enhances the function of referenda over what was intended in the Constitution – which is that they only be held to ratify or reject constitutional change.
Apart from the representational question, a central issue with this media approach is that in order to maintain the 50/50 fiction, a whole range of oppositional groups are waved into the foreground. As you are about to see, many of these are small and ad-hoc and united by little more than opposition to the referendum.
There will be farmers’ groups who actually oppose most of what the anti-capitalist groups espouse and Trotskyists and Stalinists and populist national socialists, none of whom would normally bid each other the time of day and who have only their opposition to the referendum in common. And so on.
Mostly, when they venture before the people in an election, they don’t get many votes. Quite why it’s deemed “balanced” that they be given a month in the media sunshine just for choosing the less populated side of the argument is a puzzle.
Of course, it doesn’t help that Eurosceptic British or global media conglomerates control so many of the newspapers in circulation in Ireland. You know, where there’s an undertone that if Ireland was still linked to Sterling everything would have been better.
As for radio, between the neo-con econo-libertarians in the privates and Moanin’ Ireland in the public, there will also be free runs to publicity for the usual gang of pro and anti celebrities and bigmouths…
The Hog is not looking forward to this. And that’s the honest truth.