Lisbon II

With slightly less than 3 weeks to go, the campaign for the 2nd Lisbon Treaty referendum has yet to kick off. Apart from the hilarious Coir posters, at times you'd be hard pressed to even know such an event was looming. However, now with the return of Declan Ganley things might be about to heat up.

As a yes voter the first time, I'm pretty sure I'll be voting yes again this time but I do have some reservations about the whole process and some of the arguements being put forward in favour and against the treaty.

1. The "guarantees"  that Brian Cowen extracted from the other member states don't really add anything that wasn't already in the treaty.
2. I'd rather have a useful commissioner from Ireland every few years over appointing a made up position just because we need 27 or more commissioners.
3. The Charter of Fundamental Rights will not be fully implemented from day one. To my mind, that makes it an a-la-carte charter of aspirations which will be ignored if the economic or social agenda changes.
4. The timing of the re-run is terrible. Before Nice 2 we had a general election during which all the parties ran on a platform of holding a second vote. This government has no such mandate.

 That said, I think it would be a disaster for us to vote no again. It would burn pretty much all of the political capital that we have built up over the years and while there would be no immediate repercussions, we will find ourselves more and more on the outside looking in.  Germany, Holland, Belgium etc aren't going to stop their closer integration just because we don't like it.

Finally, the main reason to vote yes is to look at the motley crew that has been assembled against it. What do SWP and Coir have in common? Or SF and UKIP? Libertas and Stormfront? Nothing except their dislike of Lisbon, but expect for the next three weeks each will be backslapping the other and re-iterating the lies and misinformation of the others.