Cameron under pressure over Lisbon referendum

Tory leader David Cameron was tonight under increasing pressure to declare whether he would press ahead with his promised referendum on the controversial Lisbon Treaty, even if it has been fully accepted by the rest of the European Union.

A major obstacle to the treaty’s ratification was removed today as Ireland voted by a massive two-to-one majority to reverse the outcome of last year’s referendum and accept the treaty.

The Yes vote leaves only two member states – the Czech Republic and Poland - yet to fully accept the treaty, with the Poles now expected swiftly follow Ireland’s lead and ratify.

Mr Cameron – who was heading to Manchester for the start of his party’s annual conference – insisted that he remained committed a holding referendum if there were any member states yet to ratify at the time of an incoming Tory government taking power.

“As long as that treaty is being discussed or debated anywhere in the Europe, we will keep fighting for that referendum and if those are the circumstances at the time of the next general election we will hold that referendum and I would ask the British people to vote No to that treaty,” he told the BBC.

“There are still two countries in Europe that are yet to ratify. I don’t want to do anything or say anything that actually prejudices the outcome in those countries.

“We want a referendum, we want to hold a referendum. You can only have one policy at once so I am pushing for that referendum. That’s the case this week, next week, and that’s not going to change.”

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague added: “Poland and the Czech Republic have every right to have their processes and decisions respected. They must not be bullied in any way.

“We will not pre-empt or prejudice their decisions in any way. Our policy will remain as it is unless and until the treaty comes into force. If and when that happens we would announce at that time our new policy to deal with a new situation.”

However, with the prospects that it will not have been ratified by the time of the general election receding, both supporters and opponents of the treaty said that the Conservative leadership needed to spell out what they would do if it had already been fully implemented.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that the Irish vote had left the Tories’ policy in tatters. He called on Mr Cameron to say whether he would try to overturn a fully ratified treaty – a move, critics warn, that could see Britain forced out of the EU.

“It is the day when the Conservatives have to come clean. Either they live with the Lisbon Treaty or they fight it. There is no third way on this,” Mr Miliband told the BBC.

“I think that the Conservatives are clinging to a Czech lifeboat to save the wreckage of their European policy.”

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said that the Conservatives needed to accept that the game was up and they would have to come to terms with the treaty, which creates an EU president and foreign policy chief while reducing the numbers of national vetoes.

“David Cameron should now finally accept the treaty as a fact of life instead of plotting with Eastern European nations to have it blocked. The Conservatives are already embarrassing themselves and Britain with their petulant impotence on Europe,” he said.

However, Mr Cameron was also coming under pressure from opponents of the treaty within the Conservative ranks, who demanded that he press ahead with a referendum, regardless of whether the treaty had been fully ratified.