Brown to the rescue

The latest Euro Summit in Brussels was a curious affair.

The other 26 leaders sought an explanation from the embarrassed Taioseach Brian Cowen as to why his fellow-citizens, after benefiting so spectacularly from Ireland’s EU membership, had so ungratefully voted down the Lisbon Treaty which was supposed to provide the 27 nations with effective working mechanisms to make their mark in the world.

In the open they insisted that the democratically expressed wishes of the Irish electors must be respected. Behind closed doors they were straining every sinew to get Ireland’s decision reversed at the first possible moment. They simply could not have their plans messed up, they argued, by the 862,415 no votes cast in the Irish referendum, less than 0.2 per cent of the EU’s 495 million population.

Publicly the others offered Mr Cowen the consoling shoulder hug they might accord to a bereaved relative. Then they rushed off into the next room to mutter about his carelessness in charge of the life support machine and to assure each other the apparently deceased Lisbon Treaty was only in cold storage.

orced back into the navel-gazing, institution-mongering preoccupations which they know infuriate their electors, they wanted Mr Cowen to suggest what they should do next. He responded with a diplomatic version of “Search me”. Neither the Irish government nor anyone else knows the balance between the various explanations offered for the voting down of the treaty. Until they do, he cannot formulate a shopping list of concessions which might make a difference.

Concerns about Irish neutrality, business taxes, abortion laws and the loss of a permanent European Commissioner may all have played a part. So, Mr Cowen suggested, did fears about the Irish economy. Many told pollsters that their biggest motivation was fear of the unknown. hey didn’t want to vote for a treaty they simply didn’t understand and were worried their leaders didn’t either.

Some said they didn’t want to be pushed about by outsiders. And the irritated French pesident Nicolas Sarkozy, who now takes over the rotating EU leadership and is forced to sideline his agenda to sort out the treaty crisis, sided with those Irish folk who complained about the EU’s stance in world trade talks. He pinned the blame personally on trade commissioner Peter Mandelson.

But who stepped forward to defend Mr Mandelson’s conduct of the trade talks? None other than his long time adversary within the Blair government, one Gordon Brown. Mr Mandelson, he insisted, was doing an excellent job on behalf of all the EU leaders. And whom did the other EU leaders see as the hero in helping to preserve the Lisbon Treaty in the crucial days after the Irish vote — yes, the same Mr Brown, the prime minister who had been so ambivalent about committing to the treaty last December that he had not joined the others at the signing ceremony but had arrived late and slunk into a back room later to do it all alone.

If Mr Brown had chosen after the Irish vote, like president Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, to proclaim that the treaty was now dead it would have been. Instead Mr Brown pushed on in the House of Lords and completed the Parliamentary process of ratification. He could have put a stake through the heart of a treaty which has been politically troublesome to him. Instead he gave it the kiss of life.

In doing so he won new respect from his fellow Europeans. It was no more ‘Grumpy Gordon’. All at once they wanted to be beside him in the family photo. M Sarkozy publicly praised his courage, just as President George W Bush had done a few days before after the prime minister pressed on with the legislation enabling terrorist suspects to be held without charge for up to 48 days.

The commemorative articles on Mr Brown’s first anniversary have not been kind. But the prime minister who has been condemned for difference-splitting and dithering took a big decision on the Lisbon Treaty and took it quickly. And in defending Mr Mandelson an easily bruised prime minister who has always seemed to have an eye for paying off old scores suddenly seemed to rise above such preoccupations. At least in Europe Mr Brown seems to have decided where he will make his stand.