Tycoon hopes to win Treaty appeal

2:20pm Wednesday 25th June 2008

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Eurosceptic millionaire Stuart Wheeler said he has "high hopes" of winning on appeal after the High Court rejected his bid to force the Government to hold a referendum on the EU's Lisbon Treaty.

Two judges rejected his claim that he was being unlawfully denied a vote in breach of his "legitimate expectation" that there would be a public ballot.

The spreadbetting tycoon's lawyers argued that the expectation arose after Government ministers promised a referendum on the failed EU constitution which the treaty replaces.

They said the evidence showed that the Constitutional Treaty - rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005 - and the Reform Treaty (the Lisbon Treaty) were one and the same, except in name.

But Lord Justice Richards and Mr Justice Mackay dismissed his application for judicial review at the High Court in London.

They said: "We have found nothing in the claimant's case to cast doubt on the lawfulness of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty without a referendum."

The judges refused Mr Wheeler, 73, permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal, saying he had no hope of succeeding.

But later a defiant Mr Wheeler said on the steps of the Law Courts that he would ask the appeal court to hear his case.

He said: "I have high hopes of winning on appeal. We shall apply to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal and we will see what they say."

Mr Wheeler says he believes the Lisbon Treaty is "dead" anyway as a result of its rejection in the referendum in Ireland, but ministers in London have refused to halt the ratification process.

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