We imagine many readers will be, like us, appalled by the dreadful performance of the Irish electorate in their recent referendum on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.
Though maybe it's not entirely fair to blame them for the mess it leaves us in. True, we are now in the unbelievable situation where we have to hope that the Czechs and the Poles will come up trumps for us by delaying their own ratification until we've had a chance to kick Nu-Labour into touch, when we expect (hope/pray) that an incoming Tory government will keep their pledge to allow us a vote of our own. Even if the Poles and the Czechs do their stuff, we may not be out of the woods even then. British governments don't exactly have an outstanding record for keeping their promises over referenda, do they?
The Czech president, sensible man, was entirely right to point out that we have been incredibly stupid to put ourselves into this situation. We should, as he says, have done something about it long ago. It would have taken pretty drastic action though - civil disobedience, rioting in the streets, all the sort of thing we don't have the bottle for these days.
So, as it stands, the votes of a few Irish bog-trotters have landed us in a mess we saw coming, didn't want, and apparently can do nothing about. The Lisbon Treaty probably will become law, Gordon Brown will sign away our birthright to Brussels, and the first president of the EU will be Tony Blair, the worst prime minister for a century, the ultimate nest-featherer, the man who invented Nu-Labour and broke this country's spirit, a man who by rights should be in gaol, not looking forward to a few more years on the gravy train with a salary of a quarter of a million a year.
Thing is, though, what exactly did the Irish think they were voting for? If the BBC television interviews in the run-up to the referendum were any guide, the average Irish man or woman in the street didn't have a clue what it was all about. Over and over they said "Yes, I'm going to vote in favour, because with the recession we really need the EU".
The poor saps, they didn't realise that they weren't voting about their membership of the EU. They weren't being asked to decide whether they should be in the EU or not. They were being asked whether they wanted to give the bureaucrats and unelected officials in Brussels even more power than they have already, whether they wanted one of the great political criminals of modern times as their president, whether they wanted their own government emasculated and sidelined. And they didn't even realise it, the fools.
We know why, too. At the last referendum the no-vote campaign was organised and effective. It's unlikely that it was any LESS organised and effective this time, but this time the electorate ignored it. And the reason is that just like the people of this country, they don't read. They don't read the newspapers, not properly. And what they do read, they don't take the trouble to understand. Their attention span is so tiny, etiolated by a diet of reality television and talentless talent-shows, educated out of existence by schooling that eschews old-fashioned skills like comprehension in favour of right-on, pupil-centred, dumbed-down, pointless pap, that even if they do manage to work their way through an entire newspaper article, they come out at the end not understanding a word of it.
Or ... maybe, just maybe, we're being unfair to the Irish.
Maybe, just maybe, they've actually been rather intelligent. Maybe they've finally hit on the ultimate revenge on the English. Maybe they've finally found a way to get their own back for centuries of oppression, for absentee landlords, for the Potato Famine ...
With a stroke of a pencil in the polling booths of Cork and Killarney, Kilkenny and Cobh, they've allowed the creation of the European empire that Napoleon dreamed of. They've sanctioned the ultimate German victory that two world wars could not achieve. Third time is the charm. With Angela Merkel in its beak and the French gibbering in its talons, the Fourth Reich is finally spreading its wings and stooping over Europe.
God help us all.
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