Dr Denis MacShane, Britain’s longest serving Europe minister from 2002-2005 writes how British Eurosceptics are pushing for Ireland to vote NO.
OPINION: The Irish vote on the Lisbon Treaty is a good one for British Eurosceptics only if it is a No vote
IT WAS British Conservative prime minister Lord Salisbury who grandly announced in a debate in the London parliament at the end of the 19th century that he would “no more give the vote to the Irish than to the Hottentot”. That vulgar imperial Old Etonian racism has today been replaced by a crude Old Etonian anti-Europeanism in the ruling circles of the English dominant classes and especially in the Conservative Party.
Far from thinking the Irish unfit to vote, much of England’s elite think the Irish people’s vote is a capital thing – provided of course they use it to vote down the Lisbon Treaty. In London’s club land, in the editorial offices of many newspapers and in the massed ranks of the Conservative Party, there is a fervent hope that the Irish will do the right thing for their long-gone rulers and vote No to Europe.
If the Irish vote No, they will be the heroes of the hour for Rupert Murdoch, for former pornographer Richard Desmond, who owns the Daily Express , and for the Barclay Brothers, the offshore owners of the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator. The Daily Mail and the Sun , whose rabid anti-Irish columnists and cartoons have been a feature of British “journalism” these last decades, will find nothing but praise for the sagacity of the fine men and women of Ireland if they vote No.
