Down the EU road to ruin

Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty last year. Now, after one of the most bullying campaigns in living memory, they have voted Yes. But there will be no "best of three" or even a penalty shoot-out, just EU elites running away from the goal, bawling "one-nil!" in unison like schoolchildren on a playing field. Meanwhile the vast majority of the 500 million or so European bystanders look on in resigned disgust. This is the modus operandi of a post-modern EU which denies inconvenient historical facts.

The Danish electorate did not reject the institutionally monetarist Maastricht treaty in 1992, they just backed it a year later - a result that sparked rioting in Copenhagen.

Irish voters didn't reject the centralising Nice treaty in 2001, they only backed it in 2002 in another re-run referendum.

Swedish voters didn't reject euro membership in 2003, despite the No side winning 56 per cent of votes and the Yes side 42 per cent - it is just that this inconvenient result hasn't been reversed yet.

In order to get their latest volte-face through in Ireland, the EU had to resort to unprecedented levels fearmongering. Yet a victory with menaces does not make it legitimate in either democratic or political terms.

Reports from Ireland make it clear that the referendum was run in an entirely undemocratic manner. Limitless money was made available to the Yes side, which spent at least ten times as much as the No side. This money came from the EU Commission, the Irish government, political parties in the European Parliament and private business.

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary openly admitted he has spent €500,000 on ads and free flights to support the Yes camp in a bid to increase his chances of buying state airline Aer Lingus. The European Commission spent countless millions in public money to influence Irish opinion, running a website and issuing statements that sought to counter the No side's arguments.

The commission's President Jose Manuel Barroso and other Commissioners strongly advocated a Yes vote during visits to Ireland. This is supposedly unlawful under European law, as the Commission has no function in relation to the ratification of new treaties, something that is exclusively a matter for the member states under their own constitutional procedures.

The Irish government used public funds to circulate a postcard with details of the so-called "assurances" of the European Council, followed by a brochure containing a biased summary of the treaty, all apparently in breach of the 1995 Irish Supreme Court McKenna judgement that it is unconstitutional to use public funds to seek to obtain a particular result in a referendum.

Perhaps most shocking was the sight of referendum commission chairman Judge Frank Clarke turning the commission into an arm of government propaganda and promoting the treaty in a good light in the media even though this was way beyond his powers.

Ultimately, Ireland's voters did not vote on the Lisbon Treaty but on membership of the EU. They feared political isolation if they did not say Yes to the same treaty that they said No to last year and were attracted by the promise of jobs and economic recovery which the Yes side claimed they would only get if they backed the treaty.

Even supporters of the renamed EU constitution, from dissident Tory MEPs to the bizarre fringes of the ultra left, will only be holding muted and private celebrations for fear of facing some awkward questions about the legality of their victory.

In fact the Lisbon Two referendum has exposed the moral and political bankruptcy of the cartel of political elites in Ireland and across the EU. There is a vacuum in politics across Europe when "Establishment" political parties line up on one side with so many of the country's citizens on the other.

Yet this hated treaty, which has still not been ratified by Germany, Poland or the Czech Republic, could be the Achilles heel of the EU. It is designed to turn the unaccountable EU Commission and Council of Ministers into a Eurofederalist government answerable to nobody. It is the only constitution in the world which enshrines capitalism as the only economic system permitted at a time when it faces one of its biggest crises in history.

The constitution would further develop the single European market for big business under the guise of the "free movement of capital, goods, services and people." This would be policed by the European Court of Justice, which has already decreed against trade union and workers' rights, including the right to strike. It is clear that a well-informed electorate would not vote for that.

The EU has been accumulating all the powers of a state slowly, incrementally and invisibly for decades and now it is seeking to assume wider responsibilities in the "high" political areas such as foreign policy and military affairs. That is what the constitutional Lisbon Treaty is all about.

But, like all empires, it could overreach itself and as a result become more vulnerable. In other words, the more power it assumes and the more it seeks to flex its muscles, the more illegitimate it becomes. As popular support falls away, the more it is left only to the paid functionaries of the EU to justify itself.

The bruising experience in Ireland has already divided the Irish people for a generation.

For the EU to now foist Tony Blair - despised as a war criminal and architect of the removal of the British chance to vote on the treaty - as our new unelected EU president could be just the next step on the EU road to ruin.

Brian Denny is spokesman for Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution