Tories drop plan for Lisbon referendum

LONDON (Reuters) - The Conservatives scrapped Tuesday their plan to hold a referendum on the European Union's Lisbon treaty after Czech President Vaclav Klaus became the last EU leader to ratify it.

"What has happened today means that it is no longer possible to have a referendum on the Lisbon treaty," the party's foreign affairs spokesman, William Hague, told television networks.

Conservative leader David Cameron will announce Wednesday what stance the Conservatives will take on the Lisbon treaty if, as expected, they win a national election due by next June.

Klaus signed the treaty after his country's Constitutional Court threw out a complaint against it, removing the last barrier to the EU's plan to overhaul its institutions.

Although the Conservatives believed passionately that the British people should have been consulted on the treaty, it would now become European law, Hague said.

"That means that our campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon treaty comes to an end today. We think that it is a bad day for a democracy," he added.

Cameron strongly opposes the Lisbon treaty, seeing it as a step to a federal Europe, and objects to its creation of the post of a new European president.

He has long promised to hold a British referendum on it if, at the time of a Conservative election victory, it had not been ratified by all EU member states.

He has said he will not let matters rest if the treaty has been ratified by all member states, as is now the case. He will spell out Wednesday what that means.