Tom McGurk broadcaster, poet & journalist tells it like it is re Lisbon

The run-in to the Lisbon II vote on Friday, which should have been an example of a 2009 modern European democratic exercise at work, has become a depressing and shabby experience.

If anything, it has only heightened concerns about any prospect of a visible and accountable European political entity emerging at the end of it all.

These have been terrible days for Irish democracy.

From the outset, the Euro federalists were outraged that little Ireland had dared to reject Lisbon.

This time, they were determined to roll out their big guns. Having conspired to slip the treaty through the various national parliaments after the democratic rebuff they received on the European Constitution, they were astonished that the Irish had used the people’s sovereignty, guaranteed in the Irish Constitution, to say No.

This time around, they determined that it would be different and, although European money could not be spent on a national referendum, suddenly a wide collection of proLisbon groups seemingly mushroomed out of the zeitgeist.

No doubt the Yes side, having secretly spent large amounts of money to probe scientifically the increasingly anxious public mood in the middle of our escalating financial crisis, came out determined to frighten voters onto the Yes side.

As the electorate has suffered the vista of disappearing jobs, escalating costs and a collapsing economy, selling the message that rejecting Lisbon would make it all worse was a no-brainer.

Quite simply, the subtext of the Yes campaign has been that we are approaching financial disaster so we cannot afford any political luxuries - including having a row over the federalisation of the European Union.

It has been as simple as that - and it has been as effective as it has been bogus. Even in a week in which the EU sanctioned a huge loan from the Polish government to move Dell jobs from Limerick to Lodz, the Yes voters were still brazening out the attractions of the globalisation ambitions of Lisbon.

Astonishingly, even the Irish trade unions don’t seem to have spotted that, for multinationals, Lisbon will signal an increasing race to the bottom in wages and conditions. Indeed, with EU enlargement beyond our ability to veto, if Lisbon comes about, look out for sweat-shop labour conditions to come in Croatia, Turkey and even Ukraine a generation down the road.

The Irish political establishment, too, has been calling in all the favours.

It has been fascinating to watch the huge numbers of those who enjoy massive salaries, courtesy of the taxpayer, as members of our numerous quangos, come out singing for their supper.

They even have the celebrity clowns out, the former sports stars and the second-hand car salesmen and the singers and actors all enjoying their 15 minutes of fame and self-publicity.

But above and beyond this, another development raises serious questions for Irish democracy. Two multinationals - Ryanair and Intel - are spending huge sums on the campaign to encourage a Yes vote. That both contributions have been largely politically illiterate and that both companies are in need of European benevolence hardly diminishes one’s concern.

Since when have multinationals thrown their considerable weight and resources into a matter of international and domestic importance in Irish politics? Have we become a European Honduras - have we really reached a point in European democracy where the bosses can tell the workers how to vote?

Who can keep a straight face while listening to Michael O’Leary extol the virtues of Lisbon’s workers’ rights legislation? Indeed, is there not an implied threat to quit Ireland in Intel’s demand for a Yes vote?

Between them, Ryanair and Intel have contributed €700,000 to the Yes campaign, and huge contributions from Europe are also pouring in. According to the Times in London, one lobbyist, Eamonn Bates, sent e-mails to fellow EU lobbying firms seeking donations of up to €30,000 to help a pro-Lisbon campaign.

Another organisation, established by Irish people working in Brussels who want a Yes result, planned to spend €500,000 on advertisements.

By the end, it will actually be possible to calculate accurately how much it cost to overthrow the sovereignty of the people as expressed in the last referendum.

In these depressing days, we have moved from Europeanisation, to some form of Euro-colonisation as those who dare to reject the Euro federalisation agenda are buried under a vast and expensive campaign that has sought to frighten and undermine the electorate.

We need hardly argue at this stage what Lisbon II is about. We now know in our waters that it’s the key to unleashing a European project that, in less than a generation, will once again make this country a tiny and insignificant appendage to a vast global enterprise. Its ambitions are no less imperial than those of previous European generations and, while the language may have changed, the political objectives have not.

This is ultimately about a United States of Europe emerging, eventually, as a significant world power beside the Chinas and the Indias of the future. Its weapons will be unbridled market forces allied with multiculturalism to ensure cheap labour markets, and its ethos will be secular and neo-liberal.

Above all, as we can now see, it eschews democracy - local or national - seeking to create instead a type of ‘euro-panocracy’ in which, not unlike the old Soviet system, the voters are never limited, just the options they can vote for. In a generation or two, Renaissance Europe and all its genius, which so profoundly shaped our European civilisation, will have been swept away.

All it requires now is for poor Paddy to forget the instinct that ‘all politics is local’ and, come Friday, head for the polling station with the price of his soul (what might once have been called the King’s shilling) in his hand. Of course, it won’t be the first time in our history that we could be bought so easily. But at least this will be the very, very last time it will be required.