Madam, - The concept of "selling the EU Reform Treaty" (Editorial, November 5th) reminds me of the last leader of the Labour Party, who suggested the party needed a new brand image.
In this view, politics is reduced to just another form of marketing to consumers and has little or nothing to do with citizens participating in a democracy.
But that, of course, is the way people are regarded by the political/media elite that advocate this treaty, which is 95 per cent the same as that rejected by the French and Dutch people.
The reality is that the political elite are not interested in democracy or gaining the consent of the people from whom they derive their power.
They are holding a referendum only because they are forced to because of the Irish Supreme Court judgment in the Crotty case which declared that power could not be transferred from the Irish people to the EU institutions without their consent.
The reality is that this State was founded as a consequence of a treaty signed by Michael Collins and agreed to by Dáil Éireann. Collins advocated support for the treaty because he believed it was a stepping stone towards a united, independent Irish republic and not back into a new empire.
We were then part of a centralised, militarised, neo-liberal superstate called the British Union before, and once is enough.
We will be voting in 2008, a year which marks the 90th anniversary of the historic 1918 election when the Home Rule political elite was defeated. Let us hope the new generation of Home Rulers are defeated this time as well. - Yours, etc,
ROGER COLE, Chair, Peace & Neutrality Alliance, Castle Street, Dalkey, Co Dublin.