Hello Lisbon, Goodbye UKIP

So that’s that. We’ve done our bit for the Lisbon Treaty… at the second time of asking. But few would have forecast the scale of the landslide. It was pretty emphatic, as emphatic as Leinster’s victory over Munster. But what it means is less clear, other than that voters took a look at what’s happening out there in the world and decided it was better to be inside the tent pissing out than to be outside being pissed on.

I’ll return to some of the implications later but before that I want to mark the passing (hopefully) from Irish politics of UK agendas and in particular the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
These bozos had and have no interest in Ireland or its politics, unless of course we want to return to the Commonwealth or indeed the United Kingdom. Their sole interest was in using the AAyerish referendum as a proxy for the one they won’t be having in the UK.
Perhaps the most problematic of their contributions was the claim (based on no doorstep canvassing on their part, mind you) that Irish reservations on the European Union were based on anti-foreigner prejudice.
Now, I am not so stupid as to think that there aren’t people here who are hostile to foreigners. Just listen to your next taxidriver, for Chrissakes. Nor am I saying that we don’t have to address issues arising from largescale and very rapid (and rapidly changing) immigration.
Indeed, I can’t say for sure that it was UKIP that was behind the posters that read Hello Lisbon, Hello Turkey. Cóir have been adept at raising these fears too, and they’re not alone. I met a longstanding Labour Party canvasser who explained that Eric Byrne lost his seat in the Rialto/Crumlin area some years ago when Sinn Féin canvassers told voters that he was responsible for the influx of Roma in the area.
No, as in the UK, the problem is UKIP’s legitimisation of racism as an acceptable field of political debate as opposed to something that should be roundly challenged at all times. That’s where we’ve been till now and one fears that they have released a genie from the bottle, for their own ends in their own country, that we may have more problems with later.
Hopefully it’s Hello Lisbon, goodbye UKIP.
But on the day after, what’s next? And how?
Perhaps the most interesting, and in general problematic, development in Irish politics and public service has been the cooption of management terminology into decision-making.
Let’s be clear, this is not the same thing as the cooption of private sector thinking and practice into politics and public service which would be a different matter. No I just mean terminology and formulae.
One of these is the notion of deliverables. Policies and work programmes are now set out in terms of deliverables and, in turn, delivered. That’s very good on many levels, of course, but is largely devoid of consideration of why and how the deliverables are delivered and whether or not other unintended consequences have attended the process.
So, for the Government, Lisbon was a deliverable and it’s been delivered. They have identified two more for this year, passing the NAMA legislation and the December Budget.
But what didn’t really happen during the Lisbon debate, and doesn’t look like happening during the two other delivery processes either, is a consideration of why and how in relation to the kind of world we want to build around ourselves other than need and fear.
If the dominant theme in winning the Lisbon Treaty referendum was the economy and the hope that being inside would protect jobs, we need to think about how this is to be accomplished. Being part of the EU won’t create jobs in itself, it just helps to be part of it.
But we also need to be building some kind of consensus about how this is to happen, how the public finances are to be stabilised and how the many thorny issues raised during the campaign can be addressed (including the relatively boring stuff about how the EU works).
Ah… that will demand leadership and, as many people in the private sector will candidly tell you, while the best leaders are good managers and the best managers are good leaders, leadership and management are very different things.
We have steadily drifted away from leadership and towards management in recent years in Ireland, thanks to what have proven to be unsustainable financial good times – everything could be delivered!
Well, we can’t go tap the rock and awake the old heroes of the Fianna who promised to return when we were in peril. And we can’t tap the European Union any more than we already do.
Nope, these troubles we must resolve on our own.