Declan Ganley and the Irish No

Declan Ganley, the Anglo-Irish millionaire who led the No campaign to the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland, spoke at a public meeting in the European Parliament today. The meeting was hosted by the Tory Eurosceptic, Dan Hannan MEP.

To the horror of the UKIP members present, Ganley presented himself as a pro-European, waxing lyrical about how good Europe was to Ireland, how the EU was the most successful peace process in history and how the last thing he wanted was for the EU to break up. The big smiles quickly disappeared from the UKIP faces as he said that.

Yet Ganley was stupendously vague as to what he did believe in and as to what he objected to in the Lisbon Treaty. He simply said that he wanted to replace Lisbon with a new Europe which would be "prosperous, democratic, free and legitimate" as if the supporters of the Lisbon Treaty wanted a Europe that was undemocratic and/or illegitimate.

He said he was against the Lisbon Treaty because having read it he didn't see how any democrat could support it, yet did not said what he found undemocratic in a treaty which seeks to extend the powers over the EU system of both national Parliaments and the European Parliament. He said he that the No campaign wants transparency, democracy and accountability to be at the heart of the European Union - precisely the objectives of the Lisbon Treaty - but offered no alternative way of achieving it.

He refused to answer questions as to where his "Libertas" No campaign obtained its massive financial resources. He peddled yet again the myth that the European Parliament had voted not to accept the result of the Irish referendum and that it had kept secret the plans to implement the treaty. (On this last point, he was particularly disingenuous as it was the Eurosceptics who had objected to the European Parliament discussing implementation before it was ratified, yet when such a postponement was agreed, they claimed it was an attempt to conceal.)

He refused to disassociate himself from the wild claims made by No campaigners to the effect that the Lisbon Treaty would impose on Ireland abortion, conscription to a European army, the death penalty and higher corporation tax. (Presumably what he meant when he said that in the referendum campaign "every angle was looked at"). Interestingly, in the same room I glimpsed an article by an American academic Andrew Moravcik, if anything a slightly Eurosceptical commentator on European affairs, whose verdict of Ganley's campaign is: "Libertas and like-minded groups specialise in spreading untruths by internet faster than they can be refuted".

He squirmed when reminded of previous writings of his calling for a fully federal European with a directly elected President.

When he rightly said that when a majority vote on a subject you have to accept the result, he was particularly reluctant to discuss the outcome of the Spanish, Luxembourgish and Romanian referenda which gave majorities for the Constitutional Treaty. When I questioned him on how to reconcile the divergent verdicts given by different European countries, in order to find a reform to the European Union acceptable to all, he simply avoided responding by repeating that Lisbon was dead - and presumably nothing it contained should ever be supported by Ireland or anybody else, even if it is ratified by the overwhelming majority of member states.

Well, if Mr Ganley is a Euroenthusiast, than I am a Eurosceptic!