To the misfits of the world, to all of us who do not conform to the closing of humanity:

Now, more than ever, the world looks two ways at once.

One face looks towards a dark, depressing world. A world of closing doors. A closing of lives, of possibilities, of hopes. These are times of austerity. You must learn to live with reality. You must obey if you want to survive, give up your dreams. Do not expect to live by doing what you like. You will be lucky to find a job at all. Perhaps you can study, but only if your parents have money. And, even then, do not think that you can study something critical. Criticism has fled from the universities and so much the better. What is the point of criticising when we all know that the world is set in its course? There is no alternative, just the reality of the rule of money, so forget your dreams. Obey, work hard in whatever scrap of employment you can find, or else look forward to a life of hunting through garbage cans, because there will be no welfare state to protect you. Look, look at Greece and be warned! That is the impoverishment you can expect, that is what will happen to you if you do not submit, that is the punishment meted out in this school of life to naughty children, to those who hope too much, to those who want too much.

This lesson of despair was learnt very well, too well, by Dimitris Christoulas, who shot himself in Syntagma Square in the centre of Athens just a few weeks ago. A 77-year-old ex-pharmacist whose pension was wiped out by the austerity measures imposed by the governments of Europe, he wrote: “I can find no other solution than to put an end to my life before I start sifting through garbage cans for my food.”

This is the meaning of austerity. This is what the governments of Europe and the world are trying to impose on the people - all the governments, all of them alike the servants of money, whether they speak from apparent positions of power, like the German government, or whether they are the simple functionaries of the international banking system, like Papademos or Monti. The austerity measures do not just impose poverty, they cut the wings of hope.

1. There has been renewed talk lately that the ‘turn’ must come, that we are rapidly approaching some point where a widescale, popular resistance to the neoliberal way of life will manifest itself. Conor Kostick, in his talk on Irish soviets for Occupy University, speculated that future historians might even note that we have already passed the watershed without realising it. Now, it is unfair and inappropriate to read the tea leaves through the referendum campaign alone. Yet the clear preference for a Yes from those who voted at all suggests a population that is still very much abject. It is hard to even imagine what this long-awaited moment of decision looks like, at least in Ireland.

That is not to say that Ireland will not simply be overtaken by events elsewhere in Europe, though that is less desirable than a surging desire for self-determination at home. It is not unreasonable to believe that the treaty will become a nullity in a half a year, a year, eighteen months. This, rather than a dewy expectancy that Irish citizens will soon reach their fill, is change that can be depended upon. At the same time, the significance of the latest complications in the economic shakeup (the Dutch government’s collapse, Sarkozy’s Nixon-in-’62 moment) should not be overstated. Austerity is not just going to ‘go away’; instead it will seek to renew itself. The old brand of austerity always needed a double act to survive, and now that Sarkozy has departed, the stony intransigence of Chancellor Merkel will have to be modified. Hollande’s friendlier version of popular privation will probably be the way that it happens, and the oxymoronic, Pushmi Pullyu programme of austerity with a ‘growth plan’ seems likely. ‘Tough choices’ was always the best narrative for assaulting public spending anyways; it is much more difficult to present when its implementers seem to enjoy what they’re doing.

A few months back Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite trade union in the UK, said the following in an interview with the Guardian:

‘But by the same token. people have to understand that we are fighting for our heritage here. Our parents and our grandparents, having defeated fascism in Europe, came back determined to build a land fit for heroes. They gave us the welfare state, the National Health Service, universal education. All of that is being attacked. I, for one, am not prepared to stand by and have my children or grandchildren say to me: “What did you do when this was being taken away from us?"’

What had struck me on reading McCluskey's remarks was that I couldn't imagine myself having the same idealised conversation with my own children. I couldn't imagine myself reaching for the Werther's Originals whilst an inquiring young scamp asked, "Granddad what did you do whenever they dismantled Europe's welfare states and drove tens of millions of people into deeper and deeper precarity, when they privatised everything and tore labour regulation and social rights to shreds?"

One reason I couldn't imagine it is because I don't know if I'd have children or grandchildren around to ask me. An assumption behind McCluskey's remarks is that family relations won't change much on account of the ongoing grab of wealth and power of which the Fiscal Treaty is an important component. People with family members heading to Australia or the US or other former English colonies in flight from capitalism with Irish characteristics will beg to differ.

Another reason: even if my children were to stick around wherever it was that I myself might wind up, would they have the capacity for critical thought and the historical awareness to ask? McCluskey's imagined scenario assumes that there will be educational facilities that will allow future generations to ask such questions.

I didn't know why I was voting No, exactly. There were a few reasons, a nebulous fog of them, swirling around the pit of my gut and pulsing in my temples.

So, I decided to turn it on its head, think outside the box, innovate, get real in the real world. I went looking for reasons to vote 'Yes' and found jobs, stability, growth, and lots of talk of confidence that didn’t inspire any.

The Irish Exporters' Association tells us that a Yes vote will give:

“Confidence to Irish exporters many customers  in  the eurozone” (sic)

The American Chamber of Commerce spells out VOTE YES with the first letter of each of its reasons for doing just that – perhaps trying to twee us into acquiescence. For the E in YES we get:

"Ensure confidence in Ireland's ability to restore growth."

Enda Kenny is confident we need confidence, as is Michael Noonan.

On theJournal.ie on Monday Senator Katherine Zappone established her support for the Fiscal Treaty in an article titled, ‘I’ve always fought for those who have the least. That’s why I’m voting Yes.’ For many of us who are fans of her academic and political work it will have been a disappointing read - laced with conformism, neoliberal logic and uncritical repetition of conventional wisdom which serves the interests of the powerful. The article requires a response – particularly because of its assertion that voting Yes serves the interests of the weakest in Irish society.

So, first, what is the treaty? There have been attempts by those campaigning for a Yes vote to divorce this treaty from its political conditions and present it as simply an agreement on fiscal rules. Reducing the scope of debate in this way allows orthodoxy to impose its logic on situations and powerful interests to draw people’s attention from the broader picture. This is a particularly useful tool when they continue to operate in the same paradigm that was so discredited in precipitating this crisis.

In the midst of all the bluster about billions and bailouts, the most fundamental consequence of adopting the Fiscal Treaty into law has largely being ignored; namely the threat the treaty poses to the very nature of European democracy.

The Fiscal Treaty’s institutionalisation of austerity will mean that all future governments will be forced to pursue current austerity policies regardless of how many people oppose them. This means that one of the most basic requirements of any democracy – that citizens are free to decide budgetary and economic policies and strategies – will be lost, and people in Ireland and across Europe will be forced to endure year after year of grinding austerity.

The late Peter Gowan coined the marvellous phrase ‘the Hayekian Europe’ to describe the political nature of the European Union. Friedrich Hayek, the principle theoretician of neoliberalism, argued that national states, national parliaments and the social compromises which have been the outcome of the social and political dynamics of contemporary politics, were insuperable obstacles to the implementation of the neoliberal project and needed to be eroded and destroyed.

Much of the treaty debate has revolved around whether Ireland could access more loans if required and whether the treaty will mean greater austerity.  These are important issues, but the even more important issue of democracy has been somewhat neglected by comparison.  Put simply, ratifying the treaty would give its provisions immunity from constitutional challenge and would make it much more difficult to change economic policy through the election of a new government. The wording of what we are being asked to vote on is as follows:

“The State may ratify the Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance… No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State that are necessitated by the obligations of the State under that Treaty or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by bodies competent under that Treaty from having the force of law in the State.”

Throughout the debate around the Fiscal Treaty any argument beyond the purely economic has been entirely marginalised; the Overton window on this discussion is a porthole. By Mike Morris.

Very few people reading this will remember a confrontation that took place between Saeeda Warsi and Caroline Lucas, on a Question Time back in January. It was an entirely inconsequential discussion of Boris Johnson's latest brainfart - on this occasion, a new airport in the Thames Estuary - and was already a damp squib, since Germaine Greer has pointed out that the site was protected by the Ramsar Convention, and most of the politicians were doing their best to pretend they knew what she was talking about. Instead they talked blandly about the need for a "balanced debate" about air travel, with Warsi particularly strident in her insistence that London was a bit short on space for planes.

Lucas, as one might expect, didn't agree; she put forward a long and well-informed list of reasons why London was pretty well-served by airports as it was. Warsi asked her if she thought there should be any more airport construction in London, and Lucas confirmed that she didn't. "Then we're not having a balanced debate are we?" said Warsi, before Dimbleby hurriedly moved onto some other topic on which expenses-fiddlers could make ethical pronouncements.