If the Government think they 'won' the Fiscal Treaty vote they are in denial. By John Farrell Clark.
The Government may have won the vote but they clearly did not win the confidence of a vast majority of the citizens. If they think they won and have a mandate, they are far more in a state of denial than one would have thought possible.
The Leveson inquiry is a club matter, in which a member has caused such extraordinary public embarrassment he must be black-balled, so that nothing changes. By John Pilger.
There was a coherent case to be made for the No side in the Fiscal Treaty referendum campaign, but it went unargued. By Vincent Browne.
The role of the left in securing a Yes vote in the referendum should not be underestimated. The scale of their waffle and incoherence contributed substantially to the success of its opponents. The left's failure to deal with the central issue of funding for the Irish state beyond 2013 - with even a smidgen of credibility - was a clincher.
The establishment view in Europe is that the problem is too much debt (by profligate countries like Greece) and, therefore, that the solution must involve (a) austerity and (b) structural reforms (which increase the competitiveness of the weaker states). The problem, however, is that the establishment view is profoundly mistaken and, as a result, the proposed treatment poisons the patient. If this is so, Europe (and the world) have a lot more to fear from the ‘reasonableness’ of political parties like Fine Gael et al than from the ‘ultra-leftists’ of Syriza.
Sociologist Ulrich Beck has made the claim that class is dead, and in his work preferred to concentrate on the choices made by individuals. In the Irish Times on Saturday 2 June Brian Hayes of Fine Gael made similar claims in relation to class. With regard to the vote on the Fiscal Treaty, the paper quotes Hayes as saying, “I think every vote is about self interest”.
Having successfully passed the ‘Stability’ Treaty referendum, the Irish people can now turn to the serious business of the summer – Euro 2012. The low turnout in the referendum says much about the general apathy and confusion of the Irish public at a time of great economic distress, but relief is just around the corner.
On Tonight with Vincent Browne, Catherine Halloran, Senan Moloney, Elaine Byrne and Johnny Fallon review the highs and lows of the fiscal treaty referendum campaign.
Below, Vincent blogs ahead of the show.
A few months back Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite trade union in the UK, said the following in an interview with the Guardian:
I didn't know why I was voting No, exactly. There were a few reasons, a nebulous fog of them, swirling around the pit of my gut and pulsing in my temples.
So, I decided to turn it on its head, think outside the box, innovate, get real in the real world. I went looking for reasons to vote 'Yes' and found jobs, stability, growth, and lots of talk of confidence that didn’t inspire any.
The Irish Exporters' Association tells us that a Yes vote will give:
On theJournal.ie on Monday Senator Katherine Zappone established her support for the Fiscal Treaty in an article titled, ‘I’ve always fought for those who have the least. That’s why I’m voting Yes.’ For many of us who are fans of her academic and political work it will have been a disappointing read - laced with conformism, neoliberal logic and uncritical repetition of conventional wisdom which serves the interests of the powerful.