The unsuspecting office workers didn’t stand a chance. There were barely 20 of them munching on ciabattas and prodding stir-fry lunches in the atrium of the Citigroup building in Dublin’s financial services district. Suddenly, half the cabinet was upon them.

Micheal Martin, the minister for foreign affairs, strode purposefully from Fianna Fail’s lavishly liveried Yes bus followed by colleagues Noel Dempsey, Eamon O Cuiv, Dermot Ahern, Mary Coughlan, Martin Cullen, Mary Hanafin, Dick Roche and Barry Andrews. Seven senior ministers and two juniors, half the cabinet, in search of a photo opportunity.

The plan might have sounded a good one when conceived a day or two earlier: turn up in the sunshine on the cafe-crammed boulevard of gentrified Lower Mayor Street. Share a shirt-sleeved latte with the young execs, smile for the cameras, then back on the bus to Government Buildings.

But Tuesday’s blue skies had disappeared, to be replaced by a steady Dublin downpour on Wednesday. The Yes bus arrived half-an-hour late, long after the lunchtime rush, and had to go to a high-security office building which had been selected as the fall-back indoor venue.

The ministers split up to canvass for support. Nobody offered any great resistance. One thirtysomething executive was coy about his intentions, but Hanafin coaxed a confession out of him. He was thinking of voting No. There was nothing in the Lisbon treaty that he objected to; he just didn’t like the fact that no other country in Europe has an opportunity to vote.

That may be so, argued the social welfare minister, but it was hardly a reason for him as an Irish voter to vote No if he had no problems with the treaty. Exacting a promise that he’d reconsider his position, she left him to finish his lunch.

As a canvassing event it was pure tokenism, an extraordinary deployment of government resources for negligible returns. As a photo opportunity, it had been ruined by the weather. The indoor setting lacked light and atmosphere, the ministers’ late arrival meant the crowd had dispersed, and the remaining workers were overawed by the high-powered parachute drop of powerbrokers.

Even as this lacklustre event was taking place, pollsters were completing a second day of sampling for the most dramatic poll of the referendum campaign. The Irish Times/TNSmrbi survey published two days later confirmed what those with their ear to the political rail track had heard coming: a 17% surge in favour of No and a 5% seepage from Yes. The No side had moved into a five-point lead with 35% of voters still undecided.

The debacle of the ministers’ canvass of Lower Mayor Street was typical of the political establishment’s shambolic efforts to convince Irish voters to approve Lisbon. With no compelling arguments of their own, the government, Fine Gael and Labour have had to resort to stamping out a hundred fires set by the No campaign all over the political terrain.

Voters have dozens of grievances about local, national and European issues — spanning the spectrum from potholes to a weakening of Ireland’s voting strength in Brussels. Angry, sullen and completely unconvinced, they seem more than willing to embarrass and hugely inconvenience the Irish political establishment on Thursday by voting No to an EU treaty for the second time in three referendums.

A hard core of 200,000 people in Ireland have voted against every European treaty. To beat them, the Yes side needs a turnout well in excess of 40%.

The first Nice treaty referendum in 2001 went down by a margin of almost 10% on a 34% turnout. A year later, with alterations, the treaty was passed comfortably with a 49% turnout.

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