At 12 O’clock on Friday, after three hours of counting in the Irish referendum, it is starting to look as if Irish voters have rejected the European Union’s Lisbon treaty - and, to borrow a phrase from the late Saddam Hussein, touched off the mother of all political crises in Europe.
“We’re not calling it, but it looks like it’s going to be No,” one senior government official told the Financial Times.
“It looks like a majority have voted No,” confirmed Lucinda Creighton, director of the referendum campaign for Fine Gael, the main opposition party, which supports the Lisbon treaty.
And this is also pretty much the view of the reporters for the state broadcasting network RTE who have fanned out across Ireland and who are watching the local counts. They are saying that the No vote on Thursday was especially strong in urban working-class districts and in rural areas.
If it really is No, Ireland’s three main political parties – the ruling Fianna Fáil and the opposition Fine Gael and Labour – will have a lot to answer for. Despite agreeing on the need for a Yes vote, they often sniped among themselves about how effective each party’s pro Lisbon campaign was.
It did not help that Bertie Ahern, the former Fianna Fáil leader, was forced to resign last month because of the negative effect of continuing public inquires into his personal financial affairs. Brian Cowen took over as premier but it may have been too late to make a difference.
As for the rest of Europe, it looks as if even if Ireland has voted No, the French, Germans and everyone else will say; “The ratification of Lisbon must go ahead.”
The question that will really need looking at, though, will be: “Why does the EU find is so difficult to sell itself to the voters?”
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