Most casual observers who are not particularly interested in the European Union and its development can surely be excused having really, by now, lost interest in this saga.

Born from the lengthy process of Valery Giscard d’Estaing’s Constitutional Convention (itself the most open and consultative process for reforming the EU ever undertaken) all the way back in 2003, then re-drafted by European Prime Ministers into a Constitution, which was then rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, then re-drafted as the Lisbon Treaty, the ratification of which in this country it would be fair to say has caused its fair share of fuss, it has now been rejected by the people of Ireland.

The tempting conclusion is surely to say that really we must have had enough of this treaty by now: it’s time to accept that this project really isn’t going to happen, and to give up on it. Many will say that its rejection for the third time in a public referendum shows that it just doesn’t have the support of Europe’s publics, denying it popular legitimacy and that therefore the Lisbon Treaty should surely just follow the example of Captain Oates and wander off into the storm, muttering that it may well be some time coming back.

This reaction would be understandable – and of course, consistent for those who have opposed it throughout. But it would be quite wrong.Firstly, the impression that this set of proposals has been rejected by Europe’s publics is quite wrong. Referendums in three countries have indeed rejected it – but we rarely hear that referendums in several more countries did in fact vote to support it. Yes, some people are against it, but more people and more referendums have voted to support it – and, for all its difficulties, in politics we generally tend to go with the decision of the majority, not that of the minority!

Most countries have ratified first the Constitution and then currently the Lisbon Treaty without a referendum. Many of us have debated long and hard the relative merits of parliamentary or referendum ratification, and I don’t propose to open up that lengthy and involved debate here again now. But ratification by elected Parliamentarians – the normal system that countries use for making laws and approving treaties – is clearly not entirely without legitimacy.

And the fact is that currently fourteen countries have ratified the Lisbon Treaty, and a document affecting 490 million people in 27 countries has been vetoed by about 1.5 million correction: less than a million people voting in one country.

But the real reason why this can’t be the end of the European reform process is not because of some “my pile of referendums is bigger than yours” contest. It’s because, sadly, most challenges won’t simply go away just because you would like them to.

The whole reform process was started because the EU should be reformed in many ways – many of them which anti-Europeans should welcome – in order to make it more democratic and effective. The challenges of changing the EU so that it can operate effectively with 27 member states, and punch their weight in the way European countries need it to on the world stage, very much remain.

Different people may take different views on the particular changes that the EU needs, but the fact is that this broad set of proposals – embodied first in the so-called Constitution, and now in the Lisbon Treaty – is what has been agreed by 27 different governments, twice, of every political colour under the sun, from the Atlantic coast to places which twenty years ago were part of the USSR, and in a process which whatever its other failings has certainly been exhaustive. No doubt there can always be further tinkering, but in broad terms these proposals are the proposals that are on the table. What the Irish no does – whether it in the end leads to the complete demise of this project or simply a delay and further changes – is set back the cause of improving the EU which those from all (or at least most) sides of the argument ought to welcome.

And what makes it particularly difficult to see the way forward now, is that this Treaty does not contain a significant new step forward to further European integration. The Maastricht Treaty, for example, created a major new European project, a single currency, the Euro. The Single European Act created a massive programme of industrial harmonisation which had a huge impact on business across the EU.

But the Lisbon Treaty contains no such grand project at all. Alongside many of the procedural improvements which all ought to welcome, it does contain for example some proposals for extending the scope of Qualified Majority Voting in the Council, and I don’t deny that some of these are certainly of some significance. But they are not on the same scale as the major new projects in past Treaties (which incidentally most countries, including the UK, did not hold referendums on).

Unfortunately the French and Dutch voters in 2005 and (as far as I have been able to tell) the Irish voters yesterday, were not voting against the Treaty because they were particularly aware of what was in it (clearly some were). In general they voted no because they were suspicious of and generally antipathetic towards a range of elements which they thought the EU represented generally (for example in France, especially a fear of the potential impact of the Services Directive).

Now, even if I don’t generally share their view, people are of course fully entitled to be suspicious of, and opposed to, the EU. But if we are now in a situation where some publics don’t like the EU and would like it to change, but therefore refuse to allow any attempts to reform it, because they are not voting on the actual proposals to do so, but out of a desire to demonstrate their general antipathy, then we do have a real problem. It’s difficult to see a way out of this kind of stalemate.

This is particularly difficult since the process of reforming the EU requires the unanimous agreement of 27 different countries. This requirement for unanimity is beginning to look like it is impossible to reform the EU – whether you are a pro or an anti (and indeed as Sir Stephen Wall reminded us in an excellent talk at the Wyndham Place Charlemagne Trust earlier this week, and which I suspect also features in his new book, for exactly this reason in relation to the CAP, Margaret Thatcher was a strong advocate of removing every country’s veto, early in her premiership).

Yes, today’s result will undoubtedly cause a lot of discomfiture among bureaucrats in Brussels, and foreign ministers around the continent. And no doubt some will gain pleasure from that sight. But if we can see beyond that rather narrow view to the real issues at stake here:

• if you think that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) needs reforming
• or if you think that the EU needs to be able to take more effective action to tackle the continent-wide and global problems of climate change
• or if you think there needs to be a more effective global counterweight to the USA, on any issue ranging from foreign military intervention to labour standards in the third world, to genetically modified food
• or if you think that the views Britain shares with the rest of Europe, on everything from free healthcare and some degree of social protection, to international development assistance, should get the best chance of succeeding
• or if you think (as I do) that the way the EU works needs significant reform

then I hope you will agree that the real losers from the logjam which Europe now finds itself in, are the ordinary people of Europe.