Policy Network commissioned a piece from me on Labour’s role in the upcoming referendum, and published it today:
Whatever we think of the balance of Cameron’s reforms — and they are mostly a mixture of trivial and useful, with a few bad ideas thrown into the mix — we are not forced, like the Tories, to try to defend the prime minister’s ill-advised approach to the whole issue, nor to try to hold together a badly divided party under pressure from hard-right eurosceptics and its own backbenchers. […] Labour has a distinctive message to give. It is no coincidence that most vociferous and active opponents of membership are to be found on the neoliberal right, who detest the fact that the single European market is a market with rules to protect consumers, workers, and the environment — rules that need improvement, but important rules nonetheless.
