Irish voters sent a clear message to Brussels last week: we won’t be bullied into “ever closer union”. And if you had any doubts that voting against the Lisbon treaty was the right decision, then the reaction following Thursday’s vote should have put those to rest. From the moment it became clear that the No campaign was going to win, Europe’s political elite has been parading in front of the TV cameras to assure anyone who will listen that they won’t be influenced by the Irish decision.

Ireland only voted, they claim, because the people are “xenophobic”. That’s a polite word for racism. Oh yes, neither did the Irish know what they were doing. Another slur, but one that we should be getting used to by now.

There is a determination in Brussels to carry on as if nothing has happened. In total defiance of the wishes of the Irish people, Germany and France have jointly called for the ratification process around Europe to continue. Britain is in on the act, too. Gordon Brown phoned Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday to promise that Britain would still ratify the treaty.

The Dutch prime minister has also called for ratification to proceed. Maybe I’m missing something, but didn’t two-thirds of his own people vote against the treaty? The president of the commission, Jose Barroso, said in reaction to the No vote: “The treaty is not dead. The treaty is alive, and we will try to work to find a solution.” With that kind of reaction, you begin to wonder why Ireland was allowed a vote at all.

One reason why the Euro elite is so upset is that they threw everything at winning this vote. The Irish government and its enormous group of Yes campaigners used every trick in the book to try and convince voters to accept the reheated EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters three years ago.

From suggesting that taxi drivers should be banned from putting “I’m voting No” stickers on their bumpers, to empty promises to farmers about a nonexistent power to veto the world trade talks, the government pulled out all the stops. But voters saw through the Yes campaign’s flimsy case.

In the Brussels bubble the discussion now is all about how to force-feed the country a treaty that it says it doesn’t want. After all, the wheels have already been set in motion. There are big empty offices in Brussels waiting for the new EU leaders to take up their posts. A little country like Ireland can’t be allowed to get in the way.

One option being discussed by Eurocrats is to repeat their Nice treaty tactics, a second referendum following some kind of phoney special “declaration” for Ireland. This is unlikely to work. Nobody can seriously expect Ireland to vote again. You can only reheat the same meal so many times without running a serious risk of food poisoning.

In 2001, the government said the 35% turnout for the original Nice Treaty vote wasn’t decisive enough and therefore another vote was needed. That definitely won’t wash this time with the turnout at over 53%.

Another Euro plan is to repeat the same farce that followed the French and Dutch rejections. This involved going away for a while and coming back with a rebranded treaty, but maintaining almost all its original content. No doubt it would come back with a cunning new name too: how about the Treaty of Dublin?

Neither possibility should happen. No is no — how complicated is that? In order to save itself from total democratic meltdown Europe needs to get back to square one. It’s not that difficult either. They only have to revive the Laeken Declaration of 2000, in which EU leaders acknowledged there was a gaping hole between the people and the politicians. The declaration said that it was time to start thinking about bringing powers back to the member states.

Unfortunately, that whole idea fell flat on its face when Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president, was put in charge of turning these goals into reality. Instead of returning powers back to member states, he drew up a European constitution that transferred even more powers to the EU.

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