From a British perspective, we may be spared the embarrassment of Tony's referendum and the shock and awe taktix of the Daily Whail and the Excess, not to mention the Scum, but there may be if anything more more pressure to implement Blair’s ‘anglo-saxon’ market-centric reforms (one of the things the left side of the French ‘non’ vote were against)....

We enjoyed the press coverage of the Gallic no on the treaty. Despite domestic xenophobes (real and strategic ones) rooting for a no vote, thinly veiled concern about the legitimacy of the EU itself is now the right-wing order of the day (with a modest side order of glee), while liberal bedwetters like Martin Kettle tell ‘the French’ off for getting it wrong: “It is the politics of Peter Pan” was MK’s splendid headline for his whining and petulant article. To paraphrase: ‘Don’t they know an adherence to liberal politics that shuns actual debate of difference is the way forward for Europe?’ I think ‘they’ do martin and lots of people don’t like such opaque and essentially bourgeois attitudes, which more politicians subscribe to now than was previously the case.

From London in particular, this rejection of a few technical reforms to an institution that a minority of EU voters either understand or appreciate (and the European Social Fund has been an undoubted force for ‘good’) will be exaggerated, pumped up, artificially enhanced, botoxed and monsantoed into a massive threat against European identity and cohesion, with the US casting itself in the role of saviour (probably in the form of economic sanctions and propaganda against France).

The French left’s no was also as much a verdict on Chirac and right-wing policy as on Europe, though of course not on the principle of a united Europe which they are in general avowedly in favour of. Isn’t it amazing how vaguely well informed electorates can still vote against the terms of that union? Isn’t it Martin? No? Traditional Europhiles bargained with vile europhobes. This time domestic concerns won out.

The alliance of right and left that damned the constitution won’t stay united under Villepin. With the right’s impending implosion under him and Chirac, we can expect to see France’s European vision come back stronger in the next few years, though this may not be helped by insurgent German Angela Merkel.

Yet we keep being told “THERE IS NO PLAN B”, “it’s the best plan we have”, etc. With the usual disregard for people power, the constitution has the power to be voted in by progressively smaller quorums on the issue (ie, four-fifths – the declaration 30 – and then down). Referendums may be disregarded as a democratic means, so watch out for the ratification programme.

As Badiou was quoted as saying on Infinite just before the vote, we need to go back to basic principles on the Europe idea: “If the ‘no’ wins, we are threatened with a possible regression with regard to Europe. But I think that this backward step is necessary. What is on the agenda is effectively a ‘beyond’ of the national sphere – with the difference that this beyond must be subjectivated on the basis of what exists in the national sphere itself. We reencounter our question: the necessity of the identification of a figure of the adversary. The question of a power of a new type, of a power opposed to US hegemony and which would not be symmetrical vis a vis US power – a decisive question, which today largely remains open. This is at least as important as ‘social Europe’ (to which I am in any case favourable). We must take up the European question again from the base.”