Be afraid. A court challenge has just been made to require a judicial review of the government's decision not to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
The government line on this is that the Treaty of Lisbon and the Constitutional Treaty are substantially different. The Lords European Scrutiny committee begs to differ.
And the contention of the court case is that they are basically the same document.

But while the UK government holds that there are differences other heads of government in EU Member States not so rabidly europhobic are pointing out that up to 95% of the content of the Lisbon Treaty is the same as the Constitutional Treaty.
Fine, but the UK has opt outs from various bits of the Lisbon Treaty that we did not have from the Constitutional Treaty so for us that percentage is much lower. That's a complicated thing to explain but it is important to understand this - nothing in EU politics is simple to explain. that's one of the problems when our politics is run in soundbites.
The UK government says that the bits that could be said to infer "statehood" on the EU such as the European flag, anthem etc., the "new Treaty of Rome" title and the word "constitution" are gone.
Phobics say good but they don't want the rest of the contents either thank you very much.
Philes say "oi, I wanted my flag!" There's even a Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6239163422  
Still with me?

Anyway, the charge is that the government mainfesto promised a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty and that the government is essentially breaking a manifesto commitment by not holding one on the Lisbon Treaty.
According to eurosceptic think tank Open Europe, the decision by the House of Commons to ratify the treaty and any decision from the House of Lords similarly, are therefore "sub judice" and should be put off for as long as possible.
Hmmm. Possibly until there has been a general election and say the Opposition - who ay that they would have a referendum- became the government? It's notable that it's one of the Conservative eurosceptic peers that is behind this.
As far as I know this is the first occasion where this has ever been the case - that a treaty cannot be ratified because of a pending court case and that a government has been taken to court for allegedly breaking a manifesto commitment. The hearing is on 9-10 June. More info can be found on the BBC as ever: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7379610.stm  

My problem with this is threefold...
Firstly I'm not a fan of referendums per se.
Now don't get me wrong. I don't like the contantly trotted out line that the UK is a parliamentary democracy and therefore our elected representatives in parliament ratify Treaties on our behalf. That line works better if both your houses of parliament contain elected representatives rather than one house being filled with people there by birthright or political appointment.
But I feel that referendums are usually the refuge of campaigners who feel the "great British public" will be on their side when the elected representatives aren't, as if the fact that you've voted for someone to represent you doesn't actually count for anything. Oh and don't you know that having people vote directly on an issue s more democratic and anyway turnout is really low so how representative are these people etc. etc.
And it does matter. If you are busy being a parent, a worker, a member of your community, your church, running your scout group etc. you are busy. You are getting on with your jobs and your life. You don't necessarily want to have to go out and vote on every matter - and frankly you probably wouldn't bother. Just look at the Swiss cantons - voting has to be compulsory in order to keep the turnout up.
So elected representatives are there to make sure that decisions get made when you are busy getting on with life. Just because some people don't like what the majority of elected representatives have decided does not make that decision necessarily wrong. That's democracy. And isn't that what referendum supporters are supposed to be in favour of?

Secondly, precedence...
There is an argument that this Treaty is really significant and must therefore be subject to a referendum. It is a change to the UK's constitution.
But none of the previous Treaties have been agreed by referendum in the UK. If you look at the developments from Treaty to Treaty the amendments being made by the Lisbon Treaty are far less far reaching than those of the Single European Act (agreed by Maragaret Thatcher) or the Maastricht Treaty. So if more significant changes have not been put before the public in a referendum why should this one?
But of course it's equally possible to argue that two wrongs don't make a right. May be the previous ones should have been...

Thirdly the stupidity argument...
Maybe if the previous Treaties had been subject to a referendum then we wouldn't have quite the stupidity about the EU that we have in this country.
A few of the basics. The EU is not a conspiracy. It is not a plot. It is not the Germans out to get what they didn't get in the 1940s, nor is it the French trying to bring everyone down to their level - both arguments I've seen put forward in the UK press over the years.
Contrary to the lines the press also put out it is something more than a free trade association and was even in 1973 when the UK joined (each enlargement of the EU has traditionally been accompanied by a widening of the scope of policy or a deepening of the interconnectedness of decision-making).
Sometimes the areas for cooperation are actually pushed by the UK such as the areas of justice and home affairs and international issues like climate change. There's nothing wrong with having different views on, say, the extent to which we want EU decision-making in the field social policy - in fact it's healthy to discuss these things. It doesn't mean that the EU is in crisis if there are different views.
And unlike the 1980s and 1990s I don't think that there are now any serious politicians or sneaky eurocrats proposing a single European state!
Look at the shock horror headlines when the now defunct Constitutional Treay was trying to clear up the mess of case law that sits alongside the constitution. "EU LAW TO OVERRULE OUR LAWS!" screamed The Sun. Um, it has done since 1974 when the European Court ruled against Germany's attempts to undermine the free trade laws. It's in our interests that it does so that our companies can trade on equal terms with rivals from other Member States. People thought it was new and threatening not because it was actually a change but because they hadn't bothered to find out what the law was in the first place and why it was so.
The EU has not proposed that fishermen should wear hairnets, that bananas must be straight or that bus routes in Cornwall must be changed. But if you have the drip drip drip effect of press stories that are distorted or frankly a load of rubbish, unchecked over decades you can understand that people dismiss EU politics as something barmy which should be viewed negatively, something too complicated, not really anything to do with me and frankly I wish it would go away...
This is appalling. We should know and care how decisions are made that affect us.

But what is worse is the reaction in the press when any action is taken to try to address this shameful knowledge gap: accusations that covering the EU in school citizenship classes is indoctrination, that providing leaflets on what the EU is and does is propaganda or somehow is wasting taxpayers money.

The people who care are stereotypically either ardently pro-federal* and make me feel embarrassed or furious little Englanders who can't accept the UK's changed status in the world (nuclear, English-speaking, punching above its weight internationally but ultimately post-empire and fading in significance in the face of 21st century India and China) and don't see that the USA has special relationships with other countries too and that being part of the most important new bloc and shaping its direction is more powerful than being on the outside and sniping. Scratch the surface of those who are actively anti the Lisbon Treaty and you will often find someone who wants to pull out of the EU altogether.
Those of us that believe that we need to be in the EU but that it's not perfect - not that it's at a stage on a route to a final state-like destination but that it is something different, never done before and that working out how to work together is part of the fun of it are in a place too complicated to explain to be worth bothering most of the time.
I digress.

The problem is that if you have a referendum I'm just not sure who knows or cares what they are voting on in an EU context. Mostly it seems voters use referendums to bash the government of the day over whatever actually does matter to them (tax rates, state of healthcare etc.)
That suits eurosceptics who can continue to portray the EU as a monster trying to destroy our way of life and no one has enough knowledge to say actually that's wrong.
It's an irony that the eurosceptics so celebrated the "NO" votes in France and the Netherlands on the Constitutional Treaty when the reasons for the no - that the EU was not providing sufficient protection for their jobs in a globalised world, was not active enough in social policy in particular - were so different from their own line of leave us alone to do our own thing.
It may suit governments too to not have too much focus on the EU I daresay... none has yet been brave enough to really harness the EU as a means of delivering policy (I suspect there's too much lack-of-control over the full process compared with Westminster) but the EU has been used as a useful scapegoat to indicate power (I overcame the EU to win this important victory) and also useful if they want to blame the EU for things that need doing but are unpopular (we fought and fought but our hands were tied - I could tell you a wonderful story about the Italians who are masters of this approach).
But it's just not right. We shouldn't live in a world of ignorance when actually the EU is something that belongs to us just as much as the decision-making process in the local council, the devolved administration, or at Westminster.

I've gone on too long. But I'll finish with this... I'm also not keen on the fact that those who are pro a referendum are basically those who want the Treaty stopped.
They are pretty clear that the general public would vote no. Even if it was not out of a passionate dislike for the actual terms of the Treaty then it would probably be out of innate conservatism and thanks to the diet of negativity that they've been fed over so long.
The sad thing is that no matter what information was put out in the short term trying to present the reality, that's probably what would happen.

[*= it's worth saying that the word "federal" which refers to a system of government where decisions are devolved to the lowest level has been so used and abused by the UK press that many people here think that it means meglomanical centralising of power in Brussels. You decide which version I'm using here]..