What would a second Irish referendum solve?

The defeat of the Lisbon treaty in the Irish referendum last week has led to lots of head-scratching about what do to next. The Irish foreign minister Micheál Martin has declared that he does not know yet: I think one should beware of anybody who claims that they do. We are in truly unprecedented circumstances.

Treaties have been rejected before, it is true, but this time is different. The Danish No vote over the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and the Irish No to Nice in 2001 were each fo...