After the resounding victory for the No campaign 10 days ago, the air is thick with the noise of plots and plans to turn that No into a Yes. Irish voters, it seems, only rejected the Lisbon treaty because they were too dumb to understand it or, in the version favoured by France’s President Sarkozy, because they had been frightened by Peter Mandelson’s trade negotiations. Or maybe the Yes camp was too complacent and did not try hard enough.

Never mind. Ireland’s electorate may not have delivered what Brussels wanted the first time, but there will be a second opportunity. Robert Mugabe reruns elections when he does not get the right result and so, it seems, does the European Union.

After consorting with President Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, it appears Brian Cowen has a plan. Concessions may be granted to Ireland over the number of European commissioners, the country’s right to set its own corporate tax rates, and abortion. These will be presented as significant victories.

Irish voters will probably get to vote again next spring, and if the Sarkozy-Merkel plan works, will say Yes in time for full ratification of the treaty by all 27 members next summer. The French president even plans a visit to Dublin next month to see what all the fuss is about and to use his charm to try to ensure the “right” result next time. After all, how could Ireland, alone of those 27 member countries, have found fault with the treaty?

It is nonsense; and it is arrogant, insulting nonsense. Ireland rejected the treaty because it was the only country whose people got to vote on it. Irish voters did not reject the treaty because they failed to understand it; only those trained as constitutional lawyers could do so anyway. They knew enough about the treaty from others’ interpretations to be aware of three things.

First, they knew this was simply a reheated version of the constitution previously rejected by French and Dutch, with well over 90% of its content identical. Second, they rejected as false claims that voting No to Lisbon would stall the operation of the European Union. The EU has continued to work normally while supposedly handicapped by the organisational limbo that followed the rejection of the constitution.

Most importantly, they knew enough about this centralising treaty to reject it on principle. It is an insult to the voters of Ireland to suggest that national issues alone — such as tax, abortion or the number of commissioners — lay behind the No vote. Polls showed that this was not the case. Ireland voted for what it believed in, and what it believed in was that it did not want powers to be directed to the centre; exactly the opposite of the brief Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president, was given when he embarked on writing a constitution all those years ago.

The other insulting aspect is that Ireland is being accorded small-country status in all this. When France and the Netherlands rejected the constitution, it stayed rejected, and Europe’s leaders had to at least pay lip service to coming up with something slightly different, which is why we had the Lisbon treaty. But that treaty’s rejection by Ireland is something that can be fixed, in time-honoured EU fashion, by fudge and sleight of hand. Indeed, if anybody wanted confirmation of the way Europe is heading, it is in the way the big boys are ganging up to steamroller Ireland’s voters into submission.

Ireland should reject the Sarkozy-Merkel “try, try, try again” plan. The EU needs to be clear that its treaty is neither workable in its present form, nor capable of being revived with a few concessions. For Ireland’s voters, this was surely a case of No definitely meaning No. If Mr Cowen, after talking to his friends in Europe, is determined to give it another go, there can only be one response. A No vote next time has to be even more decisive than earlier this month. Anything less would be a travesty.

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