CRISIS? What crisis? No crisis at all, say the people who urged us to vote 'No', although by their own admission they did not know what we were voting about.

Some of us knew better all along. But we didn't know just how bad it would be. Now we know. Specifically, Brian Cowen knows. Four months to come up with a solution! One year to implement it. And whatever way the implementation is dressed up, it will amount to Lisbon Two -- or else.

Take no notice of the soothing words from David Miliband. They are par for the diplomatic course. The true feelings of our partners were expressed by the French minister who told us: "So long, it's been good to know you." That is what "or else" means.

What music to the ears of the clowns in green shirts, one of them complete with leprechaun hat, in the European Parliament! Probably you thought them a bit of a joke. Believe me, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) are no joke.

They are racists. They regard the Irish as, at best, an inferior people. As to persons of a different colour, these have, for UKIP, no business at all in their Sceptred Isle. One of their policies is a five-year ban on immigration into Britain. They want to break up the European Union and restore the British empire.

Yes, I know this latter ambition is crazy. I also know that total independence for any country is impossible in the present age. Any time I hear it mentioned, I think of Lord Copper, the batty press baron in Evelyn Waugh's 'Scoop', who wanted "strong, mutually antagonistic governments everywhere". But sometimes even batty people get their wish, at great cost to themselves and everybody else.

And the break-up of the EU is not just a pipe dream for loonies. It is a nightmarish possibility which terrifies European leaders. They cannot allow little Ireland, or the little Czech Republic, to turn it from a possibility, into a probability.

The Czechs are to some extent protected by their geopolitical importance. We have no such protection. Out here in the Atlantic, we could be cut adrift. We might have nowhere to turn but good old HMS Albion.

Anyone who thinks that fanciful should look at the lads in the green shirts and shudder. They may be idiots, but they have friends who are very much smarter. Some of those friends have never forgiven the Irish for wanting independence; and they know that our European Union membership has been one of our most important and successful ways of securing and exerting it.

It would suit them nicely to have us in a neo-colonial situation, in some ways more convenient for them than the United Kingdom pre-1921.

No awkward parliamentary votes to bother about, for example, except a handful from the North which they can buy any time they like -- just as Labour bought the votes of the Democratic Unionist Party lately and then, hilariously, denied it.

No, I don't think this worst-case scenario will ever become reality. But I thought it worth reminding everybody of what our new "friends" are up to.

And the last thing these leprechauns will bring us is a crock of gold. In case anyone has forgotten, we have already got many crocks of gold from Europe. Lisbon or no Lisbon, there will be no more.

We do not have to wait for the dust to settle in order to see what happens to fairy gold. What effect may last week's vote have had already on investment? We cannot quantify it, but we can be sure that it is adverse and will certainly get much worse, unless Cowen finds a solution in the short time he has been allowed.

During the referendum campaign, the Government and its allies did not dare to say things like that. They have got it into their heads that the punters do not like "negative campaigning". But even though they did not say them, they were still accused of bullying and scaremongering. The truth is that the bullying and scaremongering came from the other side, and they did not cease with the referendum result.

Surely a new record in the matter of bullying was set by the proposition that the countries which have still to ratify the Lisbon Treaty should abandon the ratification process in their parliaments.

This breathtaking piece of impudence coincided with the final stage of the British ratification measure in the House of Lords. I happen to think that the House of Lords, like the Seanad, should be abolished, but we are supposed to respect our neighbours' systems, just as they are supposed to respect ours.

Making that demand at the moment the measure was passed, but before it was signed into law, meant, in effect, asking the Queen of England to defy both houses of her own parliament.

Monarchs have had their heads chopped off for less.

But who cares about laws or parliaments or constitutional propriety, our own or anyone else's, when the opportunity arises for an orgy of self-indulgence which, heaven help us, looks like lasting for another year and could end with a worse hangover than the one we have nursed for this last week?

From the neo-cons to the self-deluded idealists, to those masters of falsehood and hypocrisy, Sinn Fein, the opponents of rationality will continue to wallow in one destructive triumph and the hope of another.

Cowen must show us a way to recognise the monsters produced by the Sleep of Reason for what they are. They are leprechauns, and the brightness at the end of the rainbow is not gold but ragwort. We must wake up.

jdowney@independent.ie