Alright, we've heard quite enough now, thank you. It's one thing to feel strongly about the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty (and have you noticed how people seem to be feeling an awful lot more strongly about Europe this week than they did, say, last week, before the referendum, when the story wasn't half as exciting as it is now?). But it's another thing alto-gether to belittle those who don't see it as you do. We've had a full week of it now, a full week of disdain, condescension and insult. We've had it put about that those who voted against Lisbon were all either racists, or halfwits, or Catholic fundamentalists, or parochial hypocrites, or had been let out of Saint Mungo's for an hour to go and vote, or all of the above at once. At no stage in this blatant, unprecedented, shameless display of hegemony has it occurred to anyone that those who voted no might have done so on the basis of firm political convictions.

Instead, we've been hectored from on high: 'We told you how to vote and you went against us. Ungrateful wretches, you're a disgrace to the universal franchise.' Take John Waters in Friday's Irish Times. Now, you might have thought John Waters' dizzying leaps of logic had lost their ability to surprise you long since, but here he is, having abandoned all sense of proportion yet again. The Lisbon vote was "arguably the most disgraceful episode in the history of Irish democratic procedures," he wrote, even though we've asked him a thousand times not to exaggerate.

He draws some comfort, however, from the fact that the "iron men [sic] who built this society were not around to witness this latest exercise in self-regarding ignorance by the most pampered, narcissistic and vacuous generation ever to enter an Irish polling booth." That's how it's done, you see: you must never include yourself when berating your generation. Privately, he'll be blaming women for it too, you can be sure. Even among those few commentators who have ventured so far as to interpret this as partly a left-wing vote, there has been a horror of mentioning the words 'anti-privatisation'.

There appears to be a consensus about Ireland's left wing – that it is tiny, juvenile and primitive, harmlessly in thrall to the rugged idealism of Joe Higgins but in danger of falling victim at any moment to those opportunists in Sinn Féin. There is no burgeoning anti-privatisation movement, the consensus goes, and even if there is, they are not sophisticated political thinkers. They are not even consumers. They have bad teeth, and piercings, and dogs on a string; they play the bongos and complain uselessly about the state while continuing to sign on. They are all up in Rossport not voting.

The anti-privatisation movement is not made up of taxpayers making their worried way to their local polling station of a Thursday afternoon, doing their best to keep at bay the relentless push towards government by free market. Everyone seems to have been given leave to interpret this referendum result whatever way they want, so we might as well hand over this two dozen or so of column inches to the claim that the defeat of the Lisbon referendum was a vote against the harmonisation of competition rules, a vote against profiteering in crucial public services.

People have been watching privatisation going on for quite some time now, and they may have noticed that it hasn't brought about all those improvements it was supposed to bring.

Take the Eircom fiasco, for example, in which, the government placed a vital national asset, the state telecoms infrastructure, in private hands, so they could asset-strip it, pass it from one to another like a rugby ball, and leave us all to sing for broadband.

Take the postal service, which has not been privatised (yet) but has become subject to the competition so revered by European regulation. For the moment, postmen and postwomen are still visiting every neighbourhood in Ireland every morning, replete with local chat and a van full of dog bribes. But in practice, it takes a skilful mix of guile and coercion to get anyone to use An Post these days. Instead, you have to pay four times as much to get something delivered by a courier who, instead of delivering it, unbelievably mails you a postcard telling you that you weren't at home when he tried to deliver it. Sweden and Germany already have deregulated postal services. Before long, hey presto, there's no state postal service at all, and instead you get the no-frills private operator, who delivers your parcel to a convenient airport 70 miles away.

'What next?' people might have asked themselves. Will we lose what might be our last chance to stop Mary Harney privatising the health service? Will we have to start paying one of the Denis O'Briens of this world for our drinking water? Will free education become something we look back on fondly in our dotage? Will we sell off the rest of the country's energy resources to the likes of Royal Dutch Shell?

As interpretations of the Lisbon vote go, it's as reasonable as any other, and it's about the only interpretation that isn't an affront to the intelligence of the electorate. We said no. We knew what we were doing. Now go away.

etynan@tribune.ie

Diarmuid Doyle is on leave