The three main Labour leadership candidates have now all said that they want a referendum on Britain’s relationship with the EU. But the party’s ‘official’ position – that is, the policy it went into the last election with that everyone seems quite keen to disown – is that there should not be a referendum. The party will not have chosen its leader by the time of next week’s Queen’s Speech, even if MPs seem to be making their minds up pretty quickly, and so when the EU referendum bill is published in that speech, the party will need to respond.
It would perhaps make sense if that response wasn’t a repeat of the old Miliband policy, given all the candidates likely to succeed him want a referendum. What would be far more politically effective would be for Labour to say ‘we’re in favour of a referendum, and we are now the party of In’.
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