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LONDON - Prime Minister Gordon Brown defeated a bid yesterday to force him to call a referendum on the new European Union reform treaty.
Many analysts said they believed the treaty, which overhauls EU institutions, would be rejected if put to British voters.
In parliament, about 25 MPs from Brown's Labour Party rebelled against the government and voted with the Conservatives for the referendum on the Lisbon treaty.
But the government won the votes comfortably because most members of the pro-European Liberal Democrats, abstained.
A referendum would have been embarrassing for Brown, whose popularity has been hit by a bank crisis and government blunders during his first eight months in office.
The Conservatives, who accuse Brown of breaking a commitment by his predecessor Tony Blair to consult voters on a proposed EU constitution, pledged to take their battle for a referendum to the upper house of parliament, the House of Lords.
"We hope that in this case the Lords will hold the government to their ... commitment," Conservative foreign affairs spokesman William Hague said in a statement.
Europe Minister Jim Murphy said only Ireland of the European Union's 27 member states was having a referendum, with the rest, including Britain, ratifying the treaty in parliament.
"Governments of left, centre and right across the EU are agreeing this process in this way and I think it's the right way of doing it," he told BBC News 24.
The Liberal Democrats were split over the vote. Three lawmakers resigned from the party's leadership team after defying new leader Nick Clegg and voting for a referendum.
Clegg had wanted a referendum on British membership of the European Union to end argument over Britain's place in Europe.
Thwarted in that goal, he ordered his party members to abstain, but as many of 16 of them defied him by voting for a referendum on the treaty.
All three major British parties pledged during a 2005 election campaign to hold a referendum on the EU constitution.
Brown said the treaty was different from the constitution, which was abandoned after voters rejected it in France and the Netherlands in 2005.
"If this was a constitutional treaty, we would hold a referendum. The constitutional concept was abandoned," Brown told parliament earlier on Wednesday.
Conservatives say the Lisbon treaty is barely changed from the constitution and gives away too many powers to Brussels.
Britain has a strong strain of Euroscepticism. It stayed out of the euro and of the Schengen passport-free travel zone and negotiated a series of opt-outs from the Lisbon treaty.
If Britons rejected the treaty in a referendum, it would be an "enormous blow" for Brown, said Robin Shepherd, senior research fellow at the Chatham House think-tank. "They will do everything they possibly can to avoid having a referendum."
The lower house of parliament is expected to approve the treaty next week. The treaty will then be debated by the House of Lords, which can delay laws but not stop them.
- REUTERS
