Sláinte. Toast them in lager, Sancerre, slivovitz or ouzo but this weekend raise a glass to the Irish. Or, at the very least, acknowledge that by voting “no” to the Lisbon treaty the people of the Irish Republic have brought searing clarity to a process hitherto shrouded in jargon and pushed along by the civil servants who invented it.

It was said as the ballots piled up in Dublin yesterday that fewer than five million people were deciding the fate of 500 million. If the EU were now to respect its own rules and the Irish vote this might be true. But it means more to remember who, in EU terms, the Irish are. Besides being the only European nation trusted by their government to vote on the Lisbon treaty, they are the most Europhile in the Union. No country has profited from membership like Ireland, whose economy and infrastructure have been transformed since 1973. Each of its major parties and most of its mainstream media endorsed the treaty. Yet when its people read it they rejected it.

How would the other 495 million Europeans have voted given the chance? That is the question the commissioners, the EU's foreign ministers and Nicolas Sarkozy - currently steering its presidency - should ask themselves this morning.

In one sense Ireland's rejection of the treaty was a function of simple self-interest. Its days as a major recipient of EU funds are over, but it still ranks as a small state whose influence the treaty would dilute with majority voting by ministers and an end to the rotating presidency. But the “no” vote matters less for what it says about Ireland than about the treaty itself - an unsubtle reworking of the constitution thrown out by French and Dutch voters three years ago. It is overlong, absurdly complex and deliberately opaque. It defies the general reader to pay attention to its contents, but when Irish voters were forced to, they concluded, rightly, that any streamlining of the Brussels bureaucracy that it might achieve would come at too high a price in national sovereignty.

This treaty would give national parliaments a voice in European lawmaking, but a faint and reactive one at best. That lawmaking, meanwhile, would steadily extend its scope to energy, security and social policy. Even the most ardent believers in the European project must see the treaty for what it is: the next stage in a piecemeal but remorseless increase in the powers of a central secretariat at the expense of the national democracies that are the wellspring of Europe's diversity.

The Irish have called Lisbon a stage too far. The result will be anguished introspection at the EU foreign ministers' summit next week. Tensions within delegations, never mind between them, will be acute. The French Foreign Minister has rightly said that the Irish vote spells the end of the treaty. His colleague responsible for European affairs, by contrast, was steadfastly refusing yesterday to take “no” for an answer. Ratification, he insisted, must continue at all costs.

Lists of manoeuvres to make this happen are already being drawn up. Ireland could be offered a new “protocol” to allay fears for its own laws, then be invited to vote again. The treaty could be rewritten. It could be dismantled and adopted clause by torturous clause, or even appended in its entirety to Croatia's looming accession treaty.

Such schemes insult all Europe's electorates, not just the Irish. The foreign ministers must reject them: the EU suffers enough already from a democratic deficit in its institutions. It is in danger of suffering from democratic denial by plugging its ears to the voice of Ireland.

Gordon Brown yesterday pledged to back Mr Sarkozy and the treaty come what may. He should think better of it. This is his chance to assert his leadership of Europe's constructive sceptics, and give Britain the referendum it deserves.