Nobody really made the case for why the EU as a whole would benefit significantly from the new arrangements very convincingly - and so the loss of weighted voting strength could be presented as a net loss without compensatory benefits.
The fact that the Chater of Fundamental Rights was mostly redundant given the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that European nations have rather advanced constitutions of their own already (this is 2008, not 1776) doesn't help. And the UK, the only backwards country without a bill of rights wants to get rid of its own Human Rights Act... When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
I disagree - the problem is that the treaty was about streamlining the organization and not about anything affecting the citizen directly
I tried to argue - in my LTE of the Irish Times published some time back, that it was in Ireland's, Europe's and World's best interest that a more effective, efficient, cohesive and influential EU should emerge onto the world stage - and thus whilst Ireland would have a smaller slice of the pie (in terms of weighted majority voting) it would be compensated for by the fact that the pie had grown.
However I was about the only one who did so. Perhaps the political parties did their focus group thing and decided they had to compete with the NO side on bread and butter, local, and narrowly define nationalist issues, but on that basis I don't see how they could win the argument.
There is a lot of negative rhetoric about bloated bureaucracies and back room dealing, and when the EU actually tries to do something about this - it i voted down as giving more power to the bureaucrats.
The problem is the EU vision has been eclipsed by the nationalist vision. Everything else is boring implementation detail that people don't want to know about. Citizens do buy into visions of they are well argued and presented, but vision they bought into was one of an undemocratic EU foisting complex and opaque schemes onto them which would have unspecified and hard to determine impacts on their lives - more regulation, higher oil prices, poorer terms of trade, you name it - it was all the fault of the EU - an image that has also been fostered by local politicians to deflect blame from themselves.
I would love to have an age breakdown of the voting patterns. I suspect the younger the more NO the vote "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
Citizens do buy into visions of they are well argued and presented, but vision they bought into was one of an undemocratic EU foisting complex and opaque schemes onto them which would have unspecified and hard to determine impacts on their lives - more regulation, higher oil prices, poorer terms of trade, you name it - it was all the fault of the EU - an image that has also been fostered by local politicians to deflect blame from themselves.
