When Irish noes are smiling after referendum on European Union's Lisbon Treaty
That sensational referendum result from Ireland called the bluff on one of the most shameless confidence tricks in political history.
Seven years ago, Europe's leaders decided that, as the consummation of their great "project", they would draw up a Constitution for Europe. After extending its powers for nearly 50 years, often by subterfuge and deception, the European Union could emerge in its true light on the world stage, as an all-powerful, supranational government.
Under the Laeken Declaration of 2001, full of references to "democracy" and the need to bring "Europe closer to its people", they set up a convention which spent 18 months drafting the constitution, tightly controlled at every point by its president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. advertisement
For 18 months more they fine-tuned its details until it was ready to be ratified, by compliant national parliaments or by the referendums which various governments had been reluctantly forced to concede.
Then came that shocking moment in 2005 when the constitution was thrown out by the voters of France and Holland. The EU's leaders were stunned, and bemused as to what to do next.
Then, last summer, they came up with a breathtakingly bold plan. They would rearrange the contents of the constitution in a way that made it virtually incomprehensible, omit the provocative references to a constitution, and railroad it through their parliaments without risking any more referendums - except for the only country, Ireland, whose constitution made one unavoidable.
At least most of the EU's leaders were honest enough to admit that the new treaty and the old constitution were the same. Only Gordon Brown, to justify breaking his election promise of a referendum, pretended that the two documents were somehow quite different. He was so determined to get the treaty through that he did not even allow Parliament to discuss it properly.
His own party and the Lib Dems (with one or two honourable exceptions) are now so wedded to the lie that last Wednesday they jostled together through a Lords lobby to vote down the last hope of the referendum that both had promised.
Then came that Irish referendum, the one detail that the EU's political class had not been able to stitch up. At the last minute, a tiny portion of the peoples of Europe had, once again, been able to speak up, in a way denied to all the rest. Again the leaders were stunned - but this time they were ready.
In coming days we shall see the degrading spectacle of them wheeling out their long-prepared formula for ignoring the Irish verdict, and imposing their constitution-by-any-other-name regardless. The European project will be revealed for what it has been all along: a mighty system of state power, run by the political class with lofty contempt for the people it rules.
But at least we shall be able to remember that vote by the people of Ireland, as a last glorious gesture of Europe's dying democracy, before it is blotted out by the subtlest and most audacious coup d'état in history.
