Why is Labour making merit out of not backing an EU referendum?

Fair play to Ed Miliband for launching Labour’s business manifesto today in Bloomberg, not perhaps the party’s natural stamping ground, at least not since the prawn cocktail initiative in 1997. And it was gutsy of it too to take out a full page advertisement in the FT – they don’t come cheap – to broadcast the party’s opposition to an EU referendum. ‘The biggest risk to British business is the threat of an EU exit. Labour will put the national interest first. We will deliver reform, not exit’, it says.

Granted most British businesses, especially big ones and foreign-based ones, don’t want out of the EU. But doesn’t it seem extraordinary that the Labour should be making such a merit of not asking the electorate what it thinks lest voters give the wrong answer? Making a merit of not consulting the people always seems to be dodgy ground for a political party and it really sucks when it’s part of a pitch to big business: we’re the party that won’t ask voters any question to which the answer may be ‘no’.