 Mr Wheeler claimed the government was legally bound by an election promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.The government asserted that the promise was no longer valid as it was the Constitutional Treaty for which a referendum was promised, and that the Lisbon Treaty was fundamentally different in content and in nature (being an amending treaty rather than a constitution).The court could not find anything unlawful in the government's ratification of the treaty and the case was rejected.