The Abolition of Ireland

No2EU - Yes To Democracy emails:

The Irish Independent reports that, in an opinion on the legal status of the Lisbon Treaty 'guarantees', senior counsel and TCD law lecturer Diarmuid Phelan has queried the guarantees, saying they are a clever EU strategy that "give the appearance" of respecting Irish sovereignty.

In his opinion, Mr Phelan highlighted a number of areas of concern, including the "veiled threat to Ireland" if the Treaty was not ratified, saying: "The campaign is set up, not as a choice between deeper integration and the status quo, which in law it is, but as a choice between in or out of Europe." He added, "Fundamentally, the State is refusing to be bound by the constitutional result, and the EU is refusing to be bound by the State's right not to ratify...On this basis, in any ordinary legal environment, one must advise against, or at the very least caution, in changing one's position on the basis of the proffered guarantees."

And Martin Kelly writes:

And so there's only a day to go until the Irish go the polls to vote on the Lisbon Treaty - again, just another in the long line of examples of the Irish Establishment's contempt for the will of the Irish people. The Irish Establishment seems to believe that it belongs among the world's elites, although the mess they've made of Ireland's economy must make the world's real movers and shakers look at them as if they were bumpkins just off the bus from Bunacurry. This might be with good reason - it is perhaps what many of them are.

If nothing else, the Irish Establishment's commitment to democracy cannot be faulted. It loves voting - why else would it have the Irish vote on the same subjects again and again?

For reasons best known to themselves, the 'Yes' campaign seeks Ireland's de facto abolition. It has been orchestrated by an Establishment addicted to type of economy created by the late Charles Haughey, one only capable of being sustained by funny money and the Irish providing cheaper labour than anywhere else. This rush to 'inward investment', and the predictable collapse of the cheap labour economy (had nobody in the Irish Establishment ever heard of 'Silicon Glen'?), has given an interesting twist to one of Irish history's dominant themes, that of emigration - whereas the Irish once stood on quaysides in search of jobs overseas, they now stand in dole queues having watched their jobs go overseas. Haughey was a corrupt fraud - it should come as no surprise that history has proven his economic vision to have been as corrupt and fraudulent as he was.

One would have thought that such sentiments as the abolition of Ireland would be capable of being overcome by sheer weight of numbers - not of votes cast tomorrow, but of Irishmen killed by Irishmen warring over how Ireland should be governed. It's a pity they don't get votes.