Will Ed 'No Referendum' Miliband Help Britain Leave the EU?

It's been decades since the Labour Party supported exit from the European Union but after David Cameron's speech last week, might a Labour win in 2015 actually be the best hope of Britain leaving the EU?

How could this possibly be? Surely Labour is the party that says "yes" to the EU, no matter what the question is, the party that gave away the sacred rebate of St. Thatcher of Bruges and nonchalantly waved through the Lisbon Treaty (or the European Constitution as it used to be known).

All the above and more is true of Labour, yet the party of Ed "no referendum" Miliband has been nowhere near as consistently Europhile as the allegedly Eurosceptic Tories, who took us into the EU, and gave us Maastricht, the ERM and Black Wednesday.

Yet this is not the reason that Labour may be Britain's best hope for salvation from the EU. The best hope for the Farage tendency may lie in Labour eliminating one of the strongest assets the pro-EU campaign will have - a Cameron-led Tory Party.

Should David Cameron win the next election, the chances of which are certainly not better than 50-50 at present, and actually keep his pledge to hold an in-out referendum (again on past form it's worth checking the small print), what are the chances of Britain voting "Out"?

One is constantly reading about how much the British people chafe under the Brussels yoke and yet the British political and media establishment is almost unanimous in its support of the EU.

If and when the referendum campaign begins it will be a ludicrously one-sided affair. It will be the Tory Leadership, the Labour Party, the Lib Dems (assuming there are any left), the BBC, their house paper the Guardian and hordes of celebrities of varying importance all campaigning for an "In" vote.

And on the other?

Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and friends, the Express, a band of right-wing bloggers and possibly Bob Crow. Even the "right wing press" in the form of the Mail, the Telegraph and the Sun have not called for exit from the EU, despite years of articles denouncing some of its more egregious qualities. Will they do so when the referendum comes? Without the support of at least one major party or organisation the odds will be severely stacked against the "Out" campaign.

In short last week David Cameron was being cheered by the very people whose dreams he is hoping to shatter with his referendum. Just as Mao Zedong secured his position by sending former-Nationalist soldiers to die in large numbers in the Korean War, Cameron appears to be sending the Tory right to their doom.

This is where Labour might be the unwitting saviour of the anti-EU movement. Who knows, perhaps one day Jacob Rees-Mogg will declare Ed Miliband to be the "toast of Somerset".

Mr Miliband may have invited ridicule last week when he said he was not in favour of a referendum but it was not long before Labour people were "clarifying" that the party is not in favour of referendum right now, hinting that it may be in the future, possibly before the next election.

Indeed it was no secret that some in Labour were recently of the view that the party should pledge to hold an in-out referendum before the Tories beat them to it.

It is therefore very possible that Labour will match Cameron's pledge to hold an in-out referendum when they go into the 2015 election.

Should Labour win that election, possibly with the help of UKIP wreckers, and the referendum were to go ahead, David Cameron would almost certainly resign, or be removed, as Tory leader.

His replacement, perhaps Michael Gove or even Boris Johnson, might be willing to lead the "Out" campaign. One always feels with Mr Johnson, in particular, that he sees himself as a kind of latter-day Churchill, the man of destiny who will save Britain from continental domination.

Were this to happen the "Out" campaign would gain a major boost to its credibility and as a blessing to the Tories, Europe would cease being a general election issue, allowing them to unleash 25 years of pent-up Euro-anguish without it impacting on their chances in 2020.

Whatever happens in the future, one thing we do know is that David Cameron will do everything in his power to keep Britain in the EU. Those who wish to leave should remember this before they cheer the Prime Minister and especially before they vote for him.