Last year we endured the histrionics of the Libertas enterprise that was going to wash over us with the cleansing characteristics of a surging Atlantic foam. Libertas, naturally, sought legitimacy after the No argument prevailed in the first referendum. Their subsequent ambitions were far-reaching. They were not just going to conquer Ireland, but all of Europe from a fortress in Tuam, with a new political disposition in the European Parliament. But the Irish electorate as not as green as they are cabbage-looking and by the time local and European Parliament elections took place on 5 June, the time had come for Libertas to grab their Louis Vuitton luggage, board the Titanic, pay their enormous outstanding bills and disappear over the horizon.
Today, Sinn Féin launched its No campaign to save us from what they consider to be the toxic potential of the second Lisbon Treaty referendum on 2 October. They argue that it is ‘an out of date document that is bad for the Irish and European economy’. Don’t you always admire one-dimensional thinking and the old world of ‘black and white’, ‘good and bad’, win or lose’, ‘ma and pa’, ‘Fred and Wilma’, Barney and Beanie’. Imagine – the out of date document is ‘bad’.
How could a recession be used as scare tactic? Perhaps through some, yet to be identified, by-product of voodoo concocted by a bearded bogyman. Have you ever associated the leadership of that party with modernity? I reckon the ambition of the Irish electorate in on the prospects of recovery not the type of fossilising isolation endured by citizens of Albania, Myanmar and Zimbabwe
They are concerned by what they see as the ‘singular focus’ of the European Commission on competitiveness. Competitiveness, as a foundation to prosperity is ‘bad’. So what is ‘good’? Apparently a capacity to strategically intervene in the economy is ‘good’, but there is no elaboration of what intervention they have in mind? I guess this is another blind date; an instance of beauty really being in the eye of the beholder and the beholder being afflicted with advanced, untreated glaucoma.
What economic angel dust has Sinn Féin ever sprinkled to even tease the electorate that it is economically literate, that they understand the ambition of electorate or that they are remotely progressive or have the naked coherence to deliver anything of value to the electorate? Their advocacy of wealth creation is rather circumscribed so don’t expect any diversions down highways, byways or back lanes that could result in new jobs, new patents from research, increased international trade, a more vibrant tourist sector, a more sophisticated society, a €15 billion healthcare system that is not dysfunctional, enhanced confidence or a viable vision that is achievable. Perhaps they have become too suffocated with the economic doctrine of Robert Mugabe and his weakness for state intervention.
Their native Northern Ireland has an economy has a chronic dependence on state handouts and state employment but I have never detected a craving that this approach would be admired and desired in our own nation state. The 30% decline in support for Sinn Féin in Dublin last June would imply that the electorate wishes to idolise some other lateral thinking political demigods for whom insular tribal clamminess is not a prerequisite rather than live in a cave waiting for the rain to stop. It is simply not adequate to build a campaign on vacuous slogans. An electorate will examine what a political party is capable of achieving and what its accomplishment are. The posturing of a ‘party of protest’ achieves nothing. Society needs ‘do-ers’, not wafflers!
The UK Independence Party are also compassionately concerned about our wellbeing and the threat of a totalitarian super-state evolving “by deception, propaganda and outright lies”. Indeed! The search for virtue is endless!
