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To get rid of the intergovernment al structure, you need to follow the inter-governmental rules. By law. There is NO WAY around it. That it is a cumbersome process, and that the "elites" took all the possible pains to follw the route and make it acceptable to most as obviously not enough.
Nothing will ever happen now, which is exactly what the anti-EU had in mind. That the euroskeptics push for that to happen is understandable. That avowedly pro-Europeans support that state of fact with glee is pathetically painful to watch. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
You can say that the result matters more. But it wasn't a pretty process.
The relevant bit is "if you cared to." It did not play on TV other than very occasionally, because, rightly or wrongly, TV executives did not think it a worthwhile way to garner audiences.
So who's to blame?
I'll also note -again- that the very people that are crowing about the EU's lcack of accountability or democracy are the very same that are adamantly opposed to EU-wide votes or anything that would smack of federalisation or additional political legitimacy for any EU institution.
Why the avowedly pro-EU people find it smart to support people whose sole goal is to destroy the EU as a political project I will never get. Sure, neolibs can use the EU to push their advantage. But the EU can also push back (and indeed, I'd argue that, as the most important rule-making body in the world, it is the single strongest force against neolibs). The neolibs don't need the EU to push their wares. But they do fear it having political legitimacy.
Voting no kills the political legitimacy; it does not weaken the neolibs in the slightest. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Why the avowedly pro-EU people find it smart to support people whose sole goal is to destroy the EU as a political project I will never get.
I think the fundamental reason for this paradox is that we (on the Yes side) see the EU (for all its faults) as the best chance we have of reining in some of the worst excesses of the neo-lib project.
Those progressives on the NO side, on the other hand, see the EU as almost indistinguishable from the neo-lib project, and thus think they help to destroy the neolib project by further undermining the EU.
(The concept of globalisation is sufficient fuzzy not to distinguish between global corporations and their political servants and global/regional political organisations like the EU)
The fallacy of this progressive position - in my view - is that they think they can replace the current EU with something better, whereas the people they are aligning with actual want to destroy as much of the EU as they can and replace it with unalloyed political nationalism allied to global capital.
Its the old divide and conquer routine. Nothing scares global capital more than the prospect of more effective global political regulation.
My problem is: If I cannot convince politically astute pro-European progressives of this, what chance have I with popular sentiment in Ireland which is:
It's going tobe a very tough sell... notes from no w here
Not a very clever move. notes from no w here
Whether what the Council did was clever, I don't know. They've passed Lisbon in more countries than the Constitution, so we'll see next fall.
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