Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-07-Speech-3-063"
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"en.20091007.17.3-063"2
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"Mr President, well, it is all terribly simple really, isn’t it? We have had one vote against the Treaty in Ireland and one vote for the Treaty in Ireland, so if we have any sort of sporting sense, we ought to make this the best of three; but the difference is that with a third referendum, let’s make it a free and a fair referendum. Because what has happened in Ireland most certainly is not that! In fact, I hope you are all very proud of yourselves because what you have done is you have taken the littlest boy in the playground, got him into the corner and given him a good kicking. This is a victory for the bully boys; it is a victory for big money and a victory for bureaucrats. The whole thing was a travesty!
Oh, so you respect this vote, do you? You did not respect the last vote, did you? The European Commission poured in millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money – well, pounds or euros, it doesn’t matter, though it does in our case because we have still got the pound, thank God! – you poured in millions. Something like a factor of between 10:1 and 20:1 was the outspending of the ‘yes’ side to the ‘no’ side. The Referendum Commission in Ireland did not do its job, did not tell the Irish people that of course, the Lisbon constitutional treaty has profound impacts on their own constitution; and, perhaps worst of all, the Broadcasting Commission in Ireland changed the rules, so there was not equal coverage for the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ sides. The whole thing was an outrage. But what they did campaign on, what you all campaigned on, was ‘Vote ‘yes’ for jobs’. That was what it was all about. Well, hot off the press, folks: Aer Lingus have laid people off today and Intel, the people who put EUR 400 000 into the ‘yes’ campaign, have laid off 300 people today. One thousand, five hundred and fifty jobs have gone since Saturday; the only jobs that were preserved by the ‘yes’ vote were the jobs of the political class.
I suspect that it is all over. I suspect that for Ireland, their period of independence will be a very brief one in their history. I do not think that President Klaus will be able to hold out, I hope that he does; he is a fine and brave man. But it looks like we have got the victory of bureaucracy over national democracy. In historical terms, I think Britain now finds herself very alone, perhaps as she was back in 1940, but…
…there is a real debate, there is a real debate here. What is the point of having a Conservative Prime Minister if Mr Blair becomes the overlord? What is the point of a Foreign Secretary if we have got an EU foreign secretary with his own diplomatic service? What is the point of any of it? As far as I am concerned, this Irish referendum begins the real debate. There is no more pretending: if you want national democracy, you cannot remain a member of this European Union, and we will campaign for Britain to leave and to leave as soon possible."@en1
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