Only 16 months after rejecting it the first time, voters in Ireland have overwhelmingly approved a wide-ranging treaty to overhaul how the European Union is run and to give the 27-nation body a more forceful presence on the world stage, returns showed Saturday.
And the biggest winner may turn out to be someone who couldn’t even vote: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is the hot favorite to become the EU’s first president under the new system, which would vault him firmly back into the international limelight that he basks in.
Returns in Ireland the day after voters went to the polls showed the so-called Lisbon Treaty passing with 67% approval. It was a stunning turnaround of the treaty’s defeat in a referendum in June 2008, when 53% of voters rejected it.
