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Times Online - Ireland votes No to Lisbon Treaty

Ireland has voted No to the Lisbon Treaty, plunging the European Union into a new crisis.

With results coming in from across the country, a final result of 52 per cent against and 48 per cent in favour of the treaty was rapidly hardening. A final declaration is not expected until after 4 pm.

The Lisbon Treaty, the reworked successor to the formal constitutional pact dumped by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005, officially needs the approval of all 27 EU member states. But only in Ireland has it been put to a popular vote, meaning today’s result may have far-reaching consequences for the entire bloc.

Barely two hours after the count began today, the No camp had already started celebrating, while senior Fianna Fail strategists privately and glumly conceded their defeat.

“Call it hubris,” said one senior figure, “people seem to have forgotten what Ireland was like before we received European funding. They seem to think that we created our success all by ourselves. They are wrong.”

Oh, yeah, that’s great. “Without EU handouts, we’d be nothing!” (It’s too early in the morning to be creative enough to link in context, so just see here (and the comments!), here, and, um, here.)

Meanwhile, remember this from Baron Rees-Mogg the other day:

Combined with the earlier treaties, Lisbon does form a sort of constitution, though an unsatisfactory one. Yet no one would be entitled to start this European constitution with the words: “We, the people of Europe…” It might have to be: “We, the people of Ireland…”, since the Irish are the only people allowed a vote [hah!].

That hah!” was mine. But now, Hah HAH! Hah!

Update (6.14):

It’s the morning hour. Time for the Walk of Shame? Hah!

The Times - Ireland’s vote on the Lisbon treaty: no means no
The only nation given a referendum has rejected it. The Irish should be heard

Sláinte. Toast them in lager, Sancerre, slivovitz or ouzo but this weekend raise a glass to the Irish. Or, at the very least, acknowledge that by voting “no” to the Lisbon treaty the people of the Irish Republic have brought searing clarity to a process hitherto shrouded in jargon and pushed along by the civil servants who invented it.

It was said as the ballots piled up in Dublin yesterday that fewer than five million people were deciding the fate of 500 million. If the EU were now to respect its own rules and the Irish vote this might be true. But it means more to remember who, in EU terms, the Irish are. Besides being the only European nation trusted by their government to vote on the Lisbon treaty, they are the most Europhile in the Union. No country has profited from membership like Ireland, whose economy and infrastructure have been transformed since 1973. Each of its major parties and most of its mainstream media endorsed the treaty. Yet when its people read it they rejected it.

Hah!

The Times - Ireland’s no vote: Europe is not going away
The people’s decision will cause a mild headache. But things have not changed greatly, by Denis MacShane

As the money men, the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Unite union and Sinn Fein enjoy their weekend of joy, Ireland and the rest of Europe will wake up on Monday with a headache but not much else. Not a single Eurocrat will lose his job. The bloated 27-strong Commission may even breathe a sigh of relief as a little-noticed clause in the treaty cut its size.

Hah.

Times Online - Britain presses on with Lisbon ratification

Britain is pressing on with the tortuous ratification of the European Union’s Lisbon treaty, despite Ireland rejecting it in a referendum.

Jim Murphy, the Europe minister, said today the Irish would be left isolated when the other 26 EU member nations passed the treaty into law later this year.

Hah…