Referendum Day - And After

You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. That’s the long and the short of it. For all the debating of pros and cons, in the referendum on the European Stability Treaty, we’re faced with a choice, yes or no. And whichever way it goes, we’re not in a great place.

Only a madman would suggest that voting yes will solve Ireland’s economic problems. The country was taken to the cleaners by gamblers and chancers. The chaos they left behind them will take years to sort. Is taking years…
And there’s more. In addition to the mess, we are confronted daily by the extraordinary injustice whereby there is no debt forgiveness for ordinary people – the taxpayers and mortgage-holders who have to bail out the banks – but wholesale debt forgiveness for the banks.
Cash has been sucked out of the economy like oxygen is sucked out of the atmosphere in a big fire. A lot of dreams are going up in the ensuing conflagration. Mortgage debt is a millstone around our collective neck. Businesses don’t have necessary access to credit. As a result, we are sinking under pervasive and marrow-deep cynicism and pessimism.
Sadly, hoewever bad the status quo may be, it’s daft to suggest that voting ‘No’ would resolve these issues. It wouldn’t. For a start, voting ‘No’ would isolate Ireland from the low interest money that will be available through the European Stability Mechanism. The other option is to gamble on our ability to borrow from the money markets. Many people reckon we’ve had quite enough gambling, thanks a lot – and much as they resent the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, they fancy submitting to the whims of the markets even less.
As this is being written, the polls are suggesting a comfortable win for the Yes side. If that’s how it pans out, fine. But it would be a mistake for either the Government or the European Union to interpret any result of this sort as enthusiasm for the present path.
It’s much more likely to reflect a deeply rooted fatalism, a weary acceptance that forces are in play that are beyond our control and an allied feeling that our best bet, of a bad lot, is to play along. Voters look at Greece and shake their heads. Maybe they don’t trust the assurances of the ‘No’ side.
Where would we get the money if we don’t have access to the European Stability Mechanism? This core question has repeatedly been put to opponents of the Treaty with no satisfactory answer. That is, there has been far too much could and should in their replies for comfort.
There’s also been a lot of economic independence ideology in the ‘No’ air that sounds very 1930s-ish, as though some opponents of the Treaty believe that Ireland could cut itself off from Europe and the euro, and go it alone. Not unreasonably, a lot of people feel that it didn’t work eighty years ago and it’s unlikely to work now.
Of course, there’s another and far more intellectual strand of opposition too. There are those who have parsed and analysed the new treaty and found it wanting, arguing that it’s changing the nature of the European Union. Others say we are actually in a very strong position – our potential to pull the entire house of cards down around our heads is itself a major strength.
Maybe so. But Samson died when he applied that logic. It is unlikely that we’ll achieve anything but a similar end result, with all manner of unpredictable shit raining down on the heads of an already beleaguered Irish citizenry. However much we might amuse ourselves watching poker on the telly and taking part in the odd Texas Hold ‘Em, the idea of playing poker where the stakes are in hundreds of billions doesn’t look too tempting.
What most people actually want from life has little to do with the grand principles. What they want is pretty simple. They look at their children and they want things to be all right for them. They’d like them to have jobs and homes they can afford. As adults, that’s what the children want – or will want – too as well as peace and entertainment and a few laughs. Is this too much to ask?
But I repeat, if it does come to pass, a victory won’t achieve anything much – or indeed anything at all. It certainly isn’t going to rid the system of the poison that has infected it. There is, therefore, a pressing need for other strategies to be effected in parallel, most importantly a European growth strategy to generate jobs and trade.
There’s also a need to start rebuilding the core idea of Europe. As luck would have it, in January 2013 Ireland takes over the presidency of the European Union. By then the dust may just have settled, hopefully on a better deal with the austerity agenda leavened by a commitment to jobs. One hopes, at least, that we won’t be the jockeys as the EU contemplates a catastrophic collapse of the whole edifice.
Reclaiming Europe won’t happen overnight – but the prize is one worth chasing. Austerity isn’t just an economic mantra, it’s also a state of mind, a broad cultural climate – and we need desperately to go beyond it. Part of the process of moving Europe – and its people – beyond austerity will involve rediscovering fun, creativity, craic.
Bread and circuses are the last thing we need. I’m talking here of striving to rediscover the soul of Europe. Which isn’t German, any more than it is French or British: rather it is rooted in the complex web of our shared history, in the enlightenment, in culture and in the spirit of co-operation and mutual respect that dawned in the wake of the horros that the two world wars of the first half of the 20th Century inflicted on so many. Arts and culture – music, dance, theatre, comedy and film – should be at the core of that search.
Just as Ireland is so much more than merely an economy, so too is Europe. Let us not forget that politics is ultimately about people and the impact that policies have on them. Thinking this way changes the basic equation. By all means let’s balance the books. But remember that the books contain things other than mere units of finance. How, for example, should Britain pay Greece for the Elgin Marbles and other priceless artefacts looted in the 19th century? How should Germany pay market price for the riches stored in (among others) the Pergamon Museum?
What price should Europe place on the rescue by Irish monks of Europe’s culture and ability to write – and everything that flowed from that? What value attaches to the way Portuguese sailors opened up the world?
They say an economist knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. It would be a wretched betrayal if the great idea of Europe degenerated into a mere ledger. The next challenge will be to ensure that the vision is renewed and reinvigorated. Starting today...