Roche and Brady on Lisbon

French bloggers continue to be well up to date on developments in the post-Lisbon Treaty "crisis". Their interest in events in Ireland is no surprise: France voted against the European Constitution in 2005, but was deprived of the right to vote on what was essentially a rehash of the same constitution.

Le Salon Beige notes recent comments by Dick Roche (left), Mininster for European Affairs, who is Brussel's yes-man in the Irish cabinet. (He gave a speech to my class at college in January of this year, and was typically slavish in his support for the Commission.) Roche has said that a second referendum on Lisbon may be "necessary". This should not come as a shock to anyone in Ireland. We all knew that after a "period of reflection" the government would begin coyly (or not so coyly) preparing the voters for another referendum; after all, we gave the wrong answer on June 12th and we have to rectify that. See the RTE report on this here, which states that Dick Roche intended the comments to be his personal opinion. I find it unlikely that he would have said what he said without the sanction of King Biffo, who is not known for his tolerant nature in regard to European matters.


Meanwhile, Yves Daoudal reports on some rather different recent comments by Cardinal Brady (right), who stated the bleeding obvious when he said that a significant part of the Irish rejection of Lisbon came from suspicion of the EU and in particular the anti-Christian, secular thrust of EU policies. When the treaty was defeated in June, the Irish left (especially Sinn Féin) rushed to claim that the rejection was a result of fear of privatisation, the "race to the bottom", etc which is patent nonsense. While these were doubtless factors in the defeat of Lisbon, particularly from younger and more socialist voters, they were not the real reason for the frustration of Eurocratic plans to rubber-stamp the Lisbon Treaty. Sovereignty, immigration and attacks on national culture played a bigger role than the liberal chattering classes would like to admit. Groups like COIR, which were decried as Catholic and conservative by the pro-Lisbon media, punched well above their weight and contributed to the rejection of the treaty by reminding people - quite rightly - that heroic men and women died so that Ireland could be free of foreign rule. Read more about Cardinal Brady's comments here.

Brady is only stating what we already know, but it's a step in the right direction. Roche is completely off the mark, but when has he ever been otherwise?