Austerity's FG poster boys – new colour but same old Lisbon li(n)es

For Fine Gael, pointing out the small print of the fiscal treaty is ‘misleading’ while making things up that aren’t actually in it is fine.

2009 and the 2nd Lisbon referendum (we didn't vote the way they wanted the first time so they made us rub it out and do it again): Fine Gael's Tom Hayes, Billy Timmins, Lucinda Creighton, Enda Kenny, Simon Coveney, Mairead McGuinness and Frances Fitzgerald leading us to the Promised Land?

AFTER DECADES of flirting with various hues of blue and orange, Fine Gael has rediscovered green. It runs through all of their referendum treaty posters blitzing lamp-posts and railings.

While the poster colour has changed, the Fine Gael message hasn’t and it is back to 2009 and the second Lisbon Treaty campaign where Fine Gael promised that a ‘Yes’ vote would create jobs, promote an economic recovery and other magical things that never came to pass. Unemployment has risen since 2009 and the recovery is lost somewhere in Brussels or Berlin or even Frankfurt.

So here we are in 2012 and, according to Fine Gael, a ‘Yes’ vote is for “A working Ireland” and “Investment, stability, recovery.”

No doubt there will be more of these positive messages which have, in fact, nothing to do with a treaty that is actually about limiting spending, borrowing and the flexibility for EU member states to plan their own sovereign economic strategies.

It is interesting that the posters have gone up barely a week after Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney accused Sinn Fein of “misleading negative messages” in the party’s ‘Vote NO’. So pointing out the small print of the fiscal treaty is ‘misleading’ while making things up that aren’t actually in it is fine.

The green looks nice though, Simon.