BRITAIN:LIBERTAS CHAIRMAN Declan Ganley travelled to London last night to urge Britons to continue to demand a referendum should Gordon Brown's government proceed with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.
Speaking just minutes away from the Houses of Parliament where foreign secretary David Miliband confirmed the Labour government's intention to do just that, Mr Ganley said: "It appears that you have a government that not only denies you a voice, but ignores the voice of my country."
He added: "Gordon Brown must now do the honourable thing. He must consign this wretched treaty to the dustbin of history."
More than 100 people attended last night's hastily arranged event hosted by the Open Europe think-tank and the right-of-centre Policy Exchange.
However Mr Ganley, who was greeted with warm applause, probably disappointed some of his audience with a personal disavowal of euroscepticism.
"I'm not a eurosceptic. There's no room for euroscepticism in Ireland," he told Conservative MP David Heathcoat Amery, in answer to a question about the potential role for Libertas in building "an internationalist response" to the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty - which the MP predicted would go ahead by way of a Plan B.
However Mr Ganley did say: "Maybe I'm a Brussels-sceptic."
Mr Ganley said if the wishes of the people of Ireland were respected and the treaty was dispensed with, the work of Libertas would be complete.
However, while still insisting "this treaty is dead" and that the ratification process must stop - Mr Ganley said his organisation was ready to try and engage with people across all 27 member states "to catalyse awareness and debate" among citizens who he claimed were "being kept in the dark".
Mr Ganley did not want to see any state exercise its ultimate veto by leaving the European Union. He said specifically of the United Kingdom: "It would be a tragedy to see this great nation withdraw from the project . . . Britain needs to be at the heart of it."
However, he equally had no doubt that "if there was a referendum here [in Britain] it [the Lisbon Treaty] would be absolutely thrashed."
Declaring himself "so proud of the Irish people for voting 'No'," Mr Ganley also criticised a view emerging "amongst the European elite" that the Irish result was a mere incident that could be ignored or swept aside.
"This is the same approach that they took to the voices of the peoples of France and the Netherlands, who were also treated as a slight inconvenience," he said.
The challenge now, he said, was for Europe to show itself able to bridge the chasm between its rulers and its peoples. "The democratically expressed will of the people is the only source of legitimacy for political power."
He warned that if they ignored "the mood for change" and the demand for democracy and accountability in Europe, then those in power in Brussels would find that "the project they have been trusted to guard will be destined to run aground again and again".