Something else to consider when you vote

As a principled non-participant in the process, this news neither bothers nor surprises me in the least. But if you are thinking about voting for or against the EU Reform Treaty, you might want to consider the possibility that your vote will be ignored. Via England Expects:

“Amendment 32 of the Corbett Report on the Lisbon Treaty [was] a simple amendment calling for people to respect the result of the Irish referendum.Pretty non controversial you would have thought. After all everybody here in the Parliament reckons themselves democrats. So how can it be that the result of the vote was this…

129 in favour

499 Against

33 Abstentions.

…UKIP voted to respect the result of the Irish referendum. The Tories abstained (excepting the honourable exception of Nirj Deva). Labour and the Lib/Dems voted to ignore the Irish result.

At Libertas there is some criticism of Proinsias de Rossa for his own contribution to the No vote.

“Today’s vote is absolute confirmation that the EU Parliament is committed to ignoring the will of the people… This Treaty is designed to remove as much power from the people as possible, and today’s vote confirms the mindset behind it.

It does seem worth noting that de Rossa voted against respecting the outcome of the Irish referendum, while members from UKIP were among the few who voted in favour of it. Says quite a lot, really.