Campaigning will win us a No to Lisbon, Again!

How to get you to do nothing

The principal tactics being employed by the Yes campaign so far appear to be forms of psychological intimidation. In addition to targeting the public with disingenuous scaremongering, they are attempting to demoralise No campaigners by convincing them that they have no chance of winning.

They want to present a Yes victory as a fait accompli. I know the latter to be a fact as it was stated by a member of the European Parliament. Also we witnessed what David Cochrane, who led a successful campaign for Libertas, said when he switched sides: he advised the Yes campaign to project an image of total certainty.

The purpose of this is to sow demotivation and apathy among No campaigners. Yet radio opinion polls (though not totally reliable) indicate a substantial majority against, the letters' pages of at least two of the main national dailies show a higher ratio of No to Yes writers, and the major online internet discussion groups have polls running also showing a majority against, along with a large number of No side contributors.

An MEP, Colm Burke, informed me that judging from his experience on the campaign trail he fears that the referendum will be lost again. In addition, the Government felt the need to announce that it would not resign if it lost the referendum again. Hardly a vote of confidence in itself.

When people learn these facts, when they realise that it is part of a campaign of psychological intimidation, they become doubly motivated again. So it's very important that people know that this battle is winnable.

Of course, some people are wavering because of the economic situation. Not all the I T etc polls are inaccurate (at least one though had a very skewed question).

But the economic argument is basically the sole argument the Yes side has. And this argument is not only going to be met head on, it will be turned completely around as it's utter rubbish.

For a start, the very deregulated economic model upon which Lisbon is based is responsible for the international financial collapse. Then there is the fact that Britain is the most Eurosceptic member state in the EU and this has not stopped investors there nor the beginnings of economic recovery. In addition, Norway and Switzerland both rejected membership of the EU and despite not being at "the heart of Europe" these are two of Europe's wealthiest nations.

In fact, as Brian Lenihan recently acknowledged, membership of the monetary union allied to an influx of cheap labour from Eastern Europe played a key part in engineering our economic collapse. It is completely disingenuous and utterly reprehensible then to present self-serving economic arguments (especially coming from the same political elite responsible for the current mess) for supporting a political treaty.

Market integration and political integration are entirely different. As Professor Roland Vaubel, Germany, wrote recently, "The common market was a highly successful attempt to remove the barriers to trade and capital movements that the national governments had erected. It increased efficiency as well as freedom... Political integration or centralisation, by contrast, is a threat to liberty. The more we centralise, the more powerful the state as a whole becomes" (European Institutions as an Interest Group, pg 23).