Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Green’s should get real on Lisbon Treaty

Stephanie Lord

Deirdre De Búrca says No voters would be reluctant to join SF campaign in todays’ Irish Times. Talk about cutting your Green noses off to spite your face. Sendator de Burca is now defending the fact that the Green Party are being completely spineless on this issue with their wishy washy rubbish of “well you can support the Lisbon Treaty if you want but you don’t really have to”. Either the Green Party supports the Lisbon agenda. Or it doesn’t. Either a political party stands for something. Or it doesn’t. Clearly the Green Party doesn’t support this treaty- they just haven’t the balls to come out and say it. Because if they did, well they could kiss bye-bye to their Ministerial cars couldn’t they? I did wonder how they were going to worm their way out of this one given that they campaigned against (quite vigorously I might add) every European referendum ever held in the Free State.



It is quite clear that since the Green’s have joined the coalition of the “unwilling to do anything progressive” they have quite clearly chucked anything they ever stood for in the incinerator. From the M3 and Tara, to carbon taxes and carbon budgets. And of course, my favourite; campaigning against Shell activities in Rossport and singing from the high heavens about how terrible it was that a multinational were inflicting such ills on the local community, and now we have a Green Party Minister overseeing the whole operation. You couldn’t make it up.

The Green Party want their bread buttered on both sides and jam on the crusts. They want to be seen to be doing their bit in Government (or at least pretending) and keeping their masters in Fianna Fail happy but they don’t want to alienate the minority of their membership that have retained their principles.

"Sinn Féin has failed to articulate a clear or positive vision for Europe. Coming from a party with a broad internationalist appeal and strong European roots, Green Party members are unlikely to be attracted by the narrow nationalism that underpins Sinn Féin's approach to Europe," Ms. De Burca said. Well, if Ms. De Burca took the time to educate herself and read Eoin O’Broin’s insightful article in this week’s An Phoblacht (available here) she would realise that there should be no mistake as to Sinn Fein’s articulation of a clear or positive vision for Europe, contingent on taking a democratic equality and rights-based internationalist approach to the EU. Then again, some people just prefer to engage in flinging anti-Republican soundbites at the issue because it distracts from the real issue and leaves you not having to answer any questions. You don’t say anything of real substance and you look all the better for it. Suits the Green’s down to the ground.


A third of the Green Party membership are against the Lisbon Treaty. This is not about party politics anymore. There are broader issues and principles at stake here. This is about trying to retain equality and some kind of social justice in the EU. If that third of people truly believe that what they voted in the right way at their party conference, they should heed the calls of Sinn Fein MEP Mary Lou McDonald and join the “vote no” campaign. A level of clarity and political maturity is needed here. I have no doubt that they know the issues at stake. Now they should get real and step up to the campaign before it is to late.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

the greens are becoming increasingly comfortable with the self serving, distasteful politics of the gombeen fianna failers. They sold out the people of rossport!

Anonymous said...

Excellent, I am disgusted by the greens they have let us down

Anonymous said...

Excellent post Stephanie! Isn't it amazing the way the Green's have turned on all the issues, it's a damn shame too

Stephanie said...

Thanks...and also apologies for the grammatical errors! Serves me right for telling the Ogra ones to use spellcheck ;)

Anyway, yeah the Greens are just one big dissappointment after another. I should have mentioned also about the fact that they said there was no way that they'd ever support co-location (developing private hospitals on public hospitals grounds with the aid of tax-payers money) in their General Election Manifesto and now they're pretty much all for it. Utterly disgraceful. Lies like that are to be expected of them at this stage. I did feel sorry for their grassroots membership for about five minutes then I remembered something...fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!!