We are not having a referendum on EU membership. End of.

Ed Miliband's speech today (which is written in the style of Michael Hulse eating strawberries in the necropolis):  http://press.labour.org.uk/post/90646112699/ed-milibands-speech-to-the-policy-network-inclusive

Note the disingenuous statement:  "There should be an in/out referendum if there is a further transfer of powers from Britain to the EU."  Under the Lisbon Treaty decisions are now made by qualified majority voting, not changes to treaties.  Thus it is extremely unlikely that there will be a future formal "transfer" of powers - the EU can take all the power it likes through qualified majority voting.

 

Note the weasel words:  "But I am not going to follow others in saying that we should commit to spending the next three years focusing on an EU referendum in 2017."  This leaves the door open to an in/out referendum if it does not involve focussing on EU matters for three years.  So presumably we could have a snap referendum in late 2015 as a mandate to negotiate change - with the implication that if change is not successfully negotiated exit will become automatic.

 

Look again at the second line I have quoted.

 

It is such an odd statement.

 

"But I am not going to follow others in saying that we should commit to spending the next three years focusing on an EU referendum in 2017." 

 

Let us deconstruct this in the same way we would deconstruct a line by Michael Hulse.

 

I am not going to follow others - but a referendum might be possible if it looked like an Ed Miliband initiative.

 

saying that we should commit - but an unspoken commitment to a referendum could be likely as we all know the power of pregnant policies that have to be born when the moment is right (which might be March or April next year).

 

spending the next three years - a referendum in less than three years is possible, a referendum in more than three years is possible, but exactly matching the Conservative three-year commitment would be too humiliating and I'm not going to do it (unless forced to).

 

Otherwise he would just say: We are not having a referendum on EU membership.  End of.

 

The door has been left cleverly ajar.  Everyone (from Mandelson to McClusky) can see the things they want to see.  Ed Milband can serenely go on holiday to read tomes on political theory and twist his bespoke Rubrics Cube (the one that is used to put together the Labour election manifesto, with the squares marked with potential policies) and leave the SPAD hoodlums and their patrons to fight out things out amongst themselves.