Ireland voted no to Lisbon on 12th June. However, all is not lost. Below are 5 reasons why the Referendum failed and why it might succeed in a future vote.
Why Lisbon failed:
1. Declining trust to politicians, Irish people have lost a huge amount of respect for politicians since revelations of corruption and won't believe them or be lead by them when asked to trust them.
2. Negative tone of debate/campaign - even when Irish people listened to the debate it was usually a No myth (based on some random Article from the Treaty) being debunked, which left people confused and gave the No side more credulity. The Yes campaign also did not have enough knowledge in debates to demolish the No myths (the admission that the Taoiseach & the Irish Commissioner had not read the Treaty did not help with this perception).
3. The "Blame Brussels" excuse that national politicians use, leaving Irish people with the impression that something, over which they felt they had no control, was deciding vital issues regarding how they lived their lives (the fishermen dispute brought this into clear view). This gave rise to fears that Brussels was going to act on abortion, Gay marriage (if only!) and other moral or social issues.
4. The No campaign was bigger than ever, there was posters and leaflet drops in my small village for the No side, this has never happened before. Why they were so motivated is probably because of the disengagement of people to politics, people saw the No campaign as the nearest thing we have to a kind of populist people's movement (the No campaign is our Obama!)
5. The deliberate "You must read the Treaty" line propagated by the No campaign (knowing it was unreadable without serious academic study) followed by "Vote no if you don't know" coming up to voting day.
Why there's hope:
1. The newly empowered but ideologically divided No campaign is probably going to collapse into internal squabbling. Sinn Féin are getting a lot of the coverage even though their campaign was patch at best and this is bound to annoy Libertas and Cóir who (I feel) won this campaign with visually arresting campaign literature.
2. The vast majority of Irish people dislike Sinn Féin and most especially Gerry Adams who knows little about the Republic's politics. Their current talk about charting a course for Ireland's future in Europe will inevitably bring back memories of how they retarded Ireland's future for so long in their campaign of violence.
3. Libertas is likely to set itself up as a political party (charting a course set out by its founder – Declan Ganley 5 years ago in the United States), nearly new political parties in Ireland fail.
3. If Irish people see their interests being materially damaged by a No vote, they would reconsider. The No was a soft one, people were not ideologically bound to their decision, and if they felt it was a choice between Lisbon or active involvement in the EU they would choose to vote again.
4. The main Media outlets are very much behind another vote and will probably smooth the way to another Referendum. If there is scope for one, there will probably be an Opinion Poll soon showing a majority wanting a re-run of the Treaty Referendum.
5. A civil society campaign (which led to the Nice Treaty being passed the second time), lead by groups outside politics would be much more effective than the failed politician lead campaign.
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