No more Mr Nice Guys

Well, you can’t take much for granted these days, if anything. The last weeks gave the democratic process a right good shake in these islands. The two big ones were the referendum on the Treaty of Nice in Ireland and the UK general election, and particularly the results from Northern Ireland.

Let’s take Nice first. The proposal to change the Constitution was rejected, pretty decisively. All manner of claims have followed. Both sides have overstated their case. The abiding impression now is of confusion and apathy and a vague anti-governmental malaise. Nothing specific.

You can see this in the abstentions and spoiled votes. Lots of people have complained about the time scale for the decision, and the lack of clarity. Well, there are few justifications for abstention. We purport to live in a democracy, and three quarters of the population of the island live in a Republic. The whole concept of a republic is based on citizens understanding, accepting and discharging their obligations to their fellow citizens.

But a lot of people have said that they didn’t vote because they hadn’t a clue what was being decided. You make up your own mind, but believe me – there may be many reasons for voting no, but confusion shouldn’t be one of them.

Opposition spokespersons have accused the Government of incompetence. They may be right. Yet, the Government’s hands are tied by the McKenna decision on referendums, which concluded that both sides should be equally heard in these matters.

The principle is sound, but the practice is awry. In effect, this gives opponents a free run at any issue. If a Government minister (for example) makes a statement, s/he is likely to be attacked for undermining the McKenna decision. Similarly, the European Commission can’t spend money trying to persuade voters to support the Treaty.

On the other hand, it seems to be okay for right wing American money to support the No campaign. Somewhere along the line, there

is a need for some consistency in

all this.

I mean, there were some savvy spin doctors out there on the No side as well as dedicated activists (of many persuasions), and their scary red and white posters (inaccurate as they were), based on old pro-life and anti-divorce tabloidisation, worked. They were intended to sow doubts, and they did. And there wasn’t much coming back to clarify that they were factually wrong.

But in addition, there was the clear mixed signal from people like Mary Harney. Her swaggering pro-American and anti-European speech some months ago to a group of American business leaders is now being seen as a major gaffe and as having contributed to the anti-Europe surge. But it also showed the finger to European leaders, who took note. Their increasing grumpiness about Irish policies dates from this time.

Of course, the No campaign was greatly helped by the speech by French prime minister Lionel Jospin some days before the vote, in which he made his intentions plain about the Irish company tax regime

(our taxes are lower than France’s). The French think this attracts

foreign investors, and they may be right, though as regards Americans,

I think the fact that we can speak English is rather more impressive).

And when Mary Harney said that the Irish were closer to Boston than Berlin, this view was noted by the Germans as well. In fact, she was wrong. Many urban Irish feel closer to Amsterdam than Buncrana (a place dear to my own heart, but many wouldn’t know it).

The vote will have ramifications. There can be no doubt about that. For quite some time, the EU Commission have been saying that they don’t need to go to Dublin to find out what the Irish think, all they have to do is go to London. Could such a thing be true? If so, the whole independence rationale for being in Europe has gone – we’re just an offshore parish of the bigger Anglo-Saxon world.

Some may be happy with this, and indeed with the longer-term ramifications of the Treaty rejection – for example, the other member States will screw us on a raft of agendas, and rightly, because we screwed them in our time, and indeed some of us cheated them with total cynicism.

But in addition, the Irish will now be seen as smug, complacent, self-interested, prejudiced and unwilling to do for others what the Germans have done for them. It is not a comfortable moment. Can we possibly have forgotten that the European deal was that they would help us to get rich and, in turn, we would help others?

It won’t help our tourism either – more Brits and Yanks, less Germans, French and Italian. Believe me, it’s a bad deal.

The other thing that struck me was the strange mix of opponents to the Treaty. Dana, Roderick O’Hanlon, Joe Higgins, Sinn Féin, Patricia McKenna and the Greens… not to mention sovereignty campaigners and neutralists.

Neutrality was an issue for many. Listen – neutrality can be defined in many ways. We don’t want to be part of an army that might be used to defend Europe, but we’re perfectly happy to be part of a spiritual imperial force (often masked as humanitarian) that is as domineering and subjugating as many military forces.

Some people don’t mind sending orphan rescue missions to other countries, or food convoys or adoption agencies. Is this neutral? If you ever sat and listened to Romanians complaining about Irish raiders adopting their babies, or Irish imperialists telling them how to run their childcare services and so on, then you’d see this a little differently.

As for Northern Ireland’s election results, jeez. I don’t know. By the time you read this, Trimble may have been fatally weakened. Certainly, opinion is polarising. On the other hand, and let’s be very clear about this, the results are the democratic expression of opinion of the people of Northern Ireland. Just like the referendum in Ireland. And now it’s time to work out their meaning.

The Hog