Irish 'No' vote architect plans Europe-wide 'referendum' on Lisbon Treaty

The man who delivered an historic "No" vote in Ireland against the EU's Lisbon Treaty has revealed far-reaching plans to give voters throughout Europe a peoples' referendum on the handover of power to Brussels. Declan Ganley is planning to field more than 400 candidates in next June's European Parliament elections, in the 26 countries – including Britain – where voters have had no direct say on the treaty.The energy and rhetoric of Mr Ganley, a multimillionaire businessman, was widely credited with persuading the Irish to reject the treaty, even though every leading Irish political party apart from Sinn Fein was urging voters to say "Yes".now he wants to give British voters a chance to deliver a bloody nose to both the Brussels establishment and to Gordon Brown, whose party first promised and then refused a referendum in Britain. Mr Ganley said that campaigning on a single issue would enable voters to deliver "a clear, unequivocal message" that Europe's elites would not be able to misinterpret. In the past, EU leaders have claimed that "No" votes on the constitution in France and the Netherlands were the consequence of domestic political issues.Mr Ganley hopes to win more than 80 seats in Strasbourg, creating a Europe-wide voting bloc which would have a strong mandate to block passage of the treaty. "There's no national party that can provide that sort of punching power in the European Parliament. The voters will have mandated candidates to go in and ensure that there will be no attempts to resuscitate the Lisbon Treaty."Unlike many Tory eurosceptics, Mr Ganley says he supports the European Union but objects to the 287-page treaty document – which he says is far too long and complicated to be comprehensible. The Telegraph

This could be incredibly damaging for UKIP and to a lesser extent the BNP in next years Euro elections. Tameside Citizen