So the polls are open in Ireland for the Lisbon Treaty Mulligan referendum. Early reports suggest that “more people are voting than the last time”:http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1002/breaking1.htm in Dublin, but that turnout elsewhere in the country is very low. I’m predicting a win by somewhere in the 6%-8% range (more predicated on ‘No’ voters being discouraged and not voting, than on any great sense of positive enthusiasm for the referendum). Also worth noting in passing that Wolfgang Munchau “who suggested last year”:https://crookedtimber.org/2008/07/02/kicking-the-irish-out/ that the Irish could (and perhaps should) be kicked out of the EU for their impertinence in voting No the first time around now seems to “have gone quite cold”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9fb71816-a095-11de-b9ef-00144feabdc0.html?catid=131&SID=google on the Treaty himself. He fails to tell us whether major European member states are monitoring his shifting beliefs against the likelihood that they might soon have to pull out of the EU and reconstitute themselves in a new organization that would specifically exclude Wolfgang Munchau. Perhaps his column next week will reveal more – in the meantime, feel free to speculate about the vote, provide updated information, opinions etc in comments.
Update: Looks as though I seriously underestimated the swing – the Treaty passed by a 17% margin.
{ 26 comments }
Tim Worstall 10.02.09 at 4:11 pm
Sadly, I think you’re right. Yes will win (and I say that as a UKIPper).
However, could I just point to this “Lisbon Treaty Mulligan referendum.”….best description (well, best that doesn’t require ****s and !”%%s in it) I’ve seen so far.
Tom Hurka 10.02.09 at 5:22 pm
Just checked Wiki for the origin of “mulligan” and the story I’ve heard — it comes from a Canadian golfer named Mulligan who was given a second shot on the first tee to make up for a nerve-wracking drive to the course over a bridge — isn’t the only one. Another story credits it to a 19th-century Anglo-Irish aristocrat called Mulligan. Shall we have have simultaneous referenda in Canada and Ireland to decide which is true? Or should we just start calling a retaken golf shot a “Clinton”?
William Sjostrom 10.02.09 at 5:56 pm
I was leaning toward voting Yes, with a lot of reluctance, but I ended up voting No in the expectation that it will pass, and a closer ballot has a better chance of breaking the current godawful government (the corruption reminds me of growing up in Chicago). I do not know if a lot of people will do what I did (I am probably not your typical Irish voter), but it leaked last week that Micheal Martin, the foreign minister, was telling Fianna Fail activists to get out and push hard for a yes vote, precisely because he feared that a lot of people could do that and sink the treaty. I don’t especially like Martin, but I readily grant that he is a very smart political operator. In any event, we will probably know the answer by tomorrow.
Kevin Donoghue 10.02.09 at 6:47 pm
My problem is that either outcome will bring joy to some people on whom I would far rather inflict misery. How to minimise the weighted sum of the utility functions of Brian Cowen and Gerry Adams? Eventually I voted No, since that gives the best chance of the optimal result: a narrow Yes win which leaves them both feeling sick in different ways. As for the treaty itself, I won’t pretend to have read the thing but it seems to be a crock of shit.
James Conran 10.02.09 at 9:39 pm
I voted yes. Prediction: 57% – 43% Yes win.
Further predicition: media, bored with “government is a shambles” narrative will use result to construct “government/Biffo comeback” narrative
P O'Neill 10.02.09 at 10:26 pm
There’s a potentially shite “exit poll” saying Lisbon passed by a comfortable margin.
Joe Mansfield 10.02.09 at 10:43 pm
We Irish have a fine tradition of bringing referendums back for a revote when someone doesn’t like the result, if I recall correctly I’ve voted multiple times on Abortion & Divorce and we had to vote twice on the previous EU Nice treaty too. Sometimes it’s the Government bringing it back and sometimes its a bunch of concerned loons with an agenda. Personally most of the issues we vote on annoy me but I’m quite glad that we have the opportunity to reverse our opinion on occasion, I hope someday we get around to revisiting the other recent referendum where an overwhelming majority of the population demonstrated how xenophobic we are by voting to deny citizenship to children born here. We really covered ourselves in glory with that one.
Anyway as far as Lisbon is concerned the campaign(s) have been pretty awfully executed on both sides. The No campaign relied on stretching the truth well beyond the point of breaking (They’re going to conscript our children!, Force us to adopt a €1.50 minimum wage, Deny workers rights!, Deny Business rights!, Raise our taxes!, Introduce Abortion! Burn our Constitution!, blah, blah). The Yes campaign have been trying to make it an issue of whether we are pro-European or not when the only clear result of a No vote would be that the current situation where there is no formal exit process for a Country to leave the EU would continue. The Yes campaign have also implied that voting yes will somehow magically help us get out of the recession and help generate more employment which is pretty far fetched I have to say.
Meanwhile there were actually some very serious issues regarding the governance of the EU that Lisbon is an attempt to address. For the most part the only reason the Treaty exists at all is because there is a very pressing need for an overhaul of the EU system of governance. There are good arguments both for and against those changes but the debate in Ireland almost totally ignored those issues and instead focussed on petty local issues.
The argument that a No vote would be a good way to send a message to the Government of the day that we all think they are useless is astounding in it’s arrogance and insularity. We are the only country where the population were given a direct vote on a treaty that is of vital importance for the future of the EU at large and rather than considering what might be good or bad for the Union as a whole we choose to use this as an opportunity to score concessions for our greedy little corner and score transient political points against a few gombeens who will lose the next election in any case.
stostosto 10.02.09 at 11:21 pm
The European countries need the EU. The EU needs a new treaty to accommodate the situation after a slew of East and South East European countries have joined. Alas, no one thinks in terms of what the European countries or the EU need. As a Dane, I am used to that. We’ve had six EU referendums, and they all turned on one thing: Do we stand to make money out of this or not? Otherwise, the EU could go sausage itself.
stostosto 10.02.09 at 11:24 pm
Oh, and we also had a revote. After our rejection of the Maastricth Treaty in 1992, we voted on it again and accepted it in 1993 after some opt-outs had been negotiated in Edinburgh.
mart 10.03.09 at 1:00 am
I think Stostosto @8 gets it about right – it’s actually pretty crazy to have a referendum on something as complex as a treaty negotiated between 27 states. What would a ‘No’ vote even mean – it tells you nothing about what part of the treaty people object to. It will be interesting to see how Cameron and the Tories react in the UK over the next week…
Kenny Easwaran 10.03.09 at 1:47 am
Sounds like Ireland is the California of Europe. It looks like we (in California) might have, in 2010, our third referendum on same-sex marriage in ten years. I seem to recall also voting twice on whether or not to require parental notification for abortions. I suppose California isn’t a tax haven and Ireland doesn’t have a movie industry (and also isn’t in the process of destroying the world’s greatest university system) but these repeat referenda, housing bubbles, and high tech industries seem to point to a lot of similarities among these west coast regions.
gr 10.03.09 at 6:41 am
“I was leaning toward voting Yes, with a lot of reluctance, but I ended up voting No in the expectation that it will pass, and a closer ballot has a better chance of breaking the current godawful government” This strikes me as a very bad reason to vote ‘no’. The result will affect hundreds of millions of people outside of Ireland. To give just one example, if the Lisbon Treaty fails, what will be the prospects for further enlargement? Will it ever be possible for, say, Turkey to become a member? I suppose there are legitimate reasons to vote no, but yours isn’t one of them. If you want to break your government, use your elections.
John Quiggin 10.03.09 at 6:44 am
What’s the story with vote counting? It seems as if voting ought to have finished quite a while ago. Do they lock up the ballot boxes and go home for the weekend?
Kevin Donoghue 10.03.09 at 7:24 am
Counting begins at 9.00 am local time. We should have a good indication of the result by 1.00 pm unless it’s very close. On the question of what we should or shouldn’t be thinking about when we vote, I would like to point out that it’s the text of the Irish constitution we’re revising. If Wolfgang Munchau wants a union that doesn’t have us in it, he’s free to create one.
George Berger 10.03.09 at 8:44 am
The agreement will not “deny” workers’ rights, it will change them. In my opinion for the worse, by the mechanism called “Flexicurity.” At least one provision explicitly calls for more flexible regulations for hiring and firing. It combines this with the call for making it easier for (temporarily) unemployed workers to find a new job in a short time span. The combination is claimed to be beneficial for both parties.
This is false. We are now in a crisis, in which additional measures are being taken to make firing easy, at least in the Netherlands. But provisions for quick return to work are scarce. Only the bosses benefit from this right now. I am dismayed that the flexicurity provisions have not been widely discussed.
Cian 10.03.09 at 8:53 am
Just to let you know that the Irish bloggers have a liveblog following the results as they come in – tallies first (unofficial observations) and then results from 12.00. The link is http://www.short.ie/lisboncount and its being run by the group of us at http://www.irishelection.com
It is a yes from the early boxes – with some of the 60% no constituencies going to 50/50 or even a yes (Tallaght the most clear example).
Kevin Donoghue 10.03.09 at 11:21 am
It looks like a Yes with Dick Roche a strong contender for the coveted brass neck trophy:
James Conran 10.03.09 at 4:11 pm
Result = 67% Yes. The 2 Donegal constituencies look like the only “No”s.
ejh 10.03.09 at 6:50 pm
Ireland has lived up to its responsibilities
Really, it’s this sort of thing that made me glad when the first referendum voted No.
vrt 10.03.09 at 9:54 pm
Mart @10:
“it’s actually pretty crazy to have a referendum on something as complex as a treaty negotiated between 27 states. What would a ‘No’ vote even mean – it tells you nothing about what part of the treaty people object to.”
Complex adaptive systems such as brains, artificial neural networks and, perhaps, the EU, can actually solve this problem, i.e. they can learn subtle distinctions between similar complex, stimuli based on very simple, “success/failure” feedback. However, this requires multiple stimulus presentations.
In other words, the solution to the problem you raise is … “mulligan” referenda.
chris y 10.04.09 at 12:49 pm
Do these eedjits understand that they’ve probably just voted Tony Blair into another damn job?
Antoni Jaume 10.04.09 at 4:35 pm
chris y, be aware that there is an initiative to boycott Blair:
http://stopblair.eu/
urgs 10.04.09 at 7:33 pm
Munchau 10: Crookedtimber 0
Crookedtimber commenters -100 )-:.
“i vote no to punish the government” ” i dont like Blair”. Great how arguments on that level hold 500 million people hostage to a country of 4,5…
Munchau is right that the threaty doesnt go far enough and that financial crisis has taught os that we need more EU quickly, not less. At this point, the only options are backwards or forwards. Status quo is no option anymore. No country will accept finance free trade without new more powerfull EU regulatiton anymore after the way Irish and even Icelandic banks ran havoc arround the EU. If you want to abolish the EU, just say it, dont hide behind some meta debate.
Shay Begorrah 10.04.09 at 11:27 pm
mart@8:
“it’s actually pretty crazy to have a referendum on something as complex as a treaty negotiated between 27 states. What would a ‘No’ vote even mean – it tells you nothing about what part of the treaty people object to.”
If the electorate can not evaluate the implications of a treaty and vote yes or no why would you think they are qualified to select which political party’s manifesto best reflects their interests or philosophy and therefore which representative to vote for?
The population of Ireland found the Lisbon treaty difficult to evaluate as it was a combination of four completely unrelated sets of priorities (and some green window dressing):
* Making the framing and passing of laws in the European Union less time consuming by introducing QMV in some circumstances.
* Rationalizing the European Comission to allow for the increased number of member countries and the excessive complexity of the EC.
* Making foreign and defence policy less accountable to the whims of the electorate in individual countries and more responsive to realpolitik and the needs of the European arms industry (for example, more wars).
* Making Europe more attractilike the US and far east by reducing guarantees about how easily employees can be made redundant or have their working conditions changed.
The treaty was complex and difficult to make sense of becuase it had to be framed in such a way that a popular vote was not required in any of the large, difficult to bully, countries.
Now while the first two priorites are not unreasonable, the second two do not seem to be compatible with a left wing political outlook and I think in this case that those on the left who supported the Lisbon treaty have confused pragmatism with capitulation.
mollymooly 10.05.09 at 1:41 am
A referendum always requires government acquiescence; the only one foisted on an unwilling government was abortion 1983.
There were also the abandon-STV polls FF had in 1959 and 1968. I don’t begrudge those, abortion (1983, 1992, 2002) or divorce (1986 & 1995) since time had passed between the original and the repeat, the debate had moved on, and the proposed amendments were not identical. A referendum can be an effective way of quarantining a single hot-potato issue to prevent it infecting an entire general election campaign, to the detriment decision-making on other issues.
In the case of the Nice & Lisbon Treaty ratification reruns, the only differences from the originals were dubious “solemn declarations” which either made no substantive difference or else invalidated the ratifications already made by other member-states.
Tim Wilkinson 10.05.09 at 7:49 pm
Incidentally, among all David Cameron’s mumbling and dog whistling on the (non-)issue of a possible UK referendum, probably the most ludicrous single statement is the plaint: “the Irish have had two chances to vote on this; this government hasn’t even given us one”.
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