Stephen Tall is right on an EU referendum. And also very wrong.

Stephen Tall has recently been promoting the fact on Lib Dem Voice that the Lib Dems only ever promised a referendum on membership of the EU when there was a fundamental change in the relationship.

Stephen is absolutely right about that. That has been the line since 2007 and it hasn't really changed since then.

But he is also wrong. Wrong in that the fact he is right is largely beside the point.

We called for an in/out referendum. I remember our spokespeople before the last election saying things like "It's about time the British people had their say" and "We think the real question should be in or out". I also remember Clegg referring to those who were questioning this as cowardly. 4 years ago he wrote a piece that included these comments:

"..time for a debate politicians have been too cowardly to hold for 30 years - time for a referendum on the big question. Do we want to be in or out?"

and:

"This generation deserves its chance to say where we stand on Europe - in or out."

To most people's minds those sort of statements are pretty unequivocal. If we row back from them now we look shifty and like we are the ones who are cowards.

Guido and others have been making hay in recent days with Lib Dem leaflets from a few years back that called for a referendum. There were no caveats attached and we were clearly trying to neutralise Europe as an issue in order to win votes from those who might want to vote "out".

So whilst on a technicality we might be able to point to the fact that the context was in discussions around the Lisbon treaty and how if there was going to be a referendum on that treaty we'd be better off with it being an in/out referendum. But that won't cut much ice with most people. There are too many on the record Lib Dem statements of how "the people should decide". We look like we are backing away from a referendum.

One final point. This referendum is going to happen. It is a racing political certainty. The time has come. As Clegg pointed out in that piece nobody under the age of 51 (now 55) has ever voted on membership of the EU/EEC. If it is inevitable as it is, far better to be on the side of those calling for it from a strong principled position rather than looking like the shifty bunch who called for a referendum a few years back but now are denying that's what they really meant. During any referendum campaign "they never wanted to have this vote in the first place" will form a plank of the "out" campaign. We're giving them unnecessary free ammunition.

We've already dug a hole for ourselves here. We need to get out of it and accept we called for a referendum. Not keep wriggling on the hook. We have precious little political capital left. We should not be spending it on this futile exercise.

Stephen Tall and Emma Burnell on House of Comments - Episode 28

The latest "House of Comments" podcast with myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion political blog is now live. The website for the podcasts is here and the 28th episode which we recorded on Tuesday 1st June is available to download via this page here (raw mp3 file here if you prefer). You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here. Or you can listen to it right now here:

The format is to invite political bloggers on each week to discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere.

This week we were joined by Stephen Tall, co-editor of Lib Dem Voice and Emma Burnell of the Labour Scarlett Standard blog.

We discussed the David Laws resignation and its ramifcations for public life and the coalition as well as the Labour leadership contest.

If you are a political blogger and would like to participate in the future, please drop me an e-mail here.

Leader Election Debate Live Chat - 2

So following the first debate and Nick Clegg's performance the Lib Dems have shot up in the polls. Will the second debate tonight on foreign policy make any further difference?

We are running a Live Chat on here which will also be running simultaneously on Lib Dem Voice. I am indisposed but Matt Raven and Stephen Tall will be moderating. We will also be running this for the final debate next week too.

Please join Matt and Stephen below from 8:30pm:

Leader Election Debate Live Chat - 1

So the time is finally upon us. At 8:30pm tonight we will finally see the first ever debate between the three main party leaders during a General Election campaign in the UK broadcast live on ITV1. I know they have been doing this in the US for the last 50 years but you know, it takes us a little while to catch up!

Anyway, to mark this auspicious occasion, we are running a Live Chat on here which will also be running simultaneously on Lib Dem Voice. Myself and Stephen Tall will be moderating. We will also be running these for the second and third debates in the coming weeks too.

Please join us below from 8:30pm to give us the benefit of your wisdom and your thoughts on their performances as Clegg, Cameron and Brown battle it out:

Iain Dale et al on Eric Pickles

Stephen Tall has posted on LDV about the eerie silence from the right wing blogosphere regarding Eric Pickles' performance on Question Time that I blogged about earlier.

In the comments someone pointed out that Con Home have now commented on it, albeit in a fairly muted way whilst claiming still to be a big fan of Pickles.

Iain Dale however posted in the thread that he "did not want to intrude on private grief". I am not quite sure what he means by this seeing as it was broadcast on the most popular channel in the UK on one of the most popular political programmes, but you can bet your bottom dollar if this had been a senior Labour or LibDem making such a cock-up there would be a very long thread dedicated to it on his blog.

Stephen makes the more serious point however that this is worrying for the likelihood in the future of the right-wing blogosphere holding any future Tory government to account. One of the reasons I think that the right-wing blogs have been so successful in the last few years is that they are not in government and so have much freedom to attack the government and the status quo. The real test will be once their friends are in power, will they still stand up for what they really think or will they pull their punches?

Dismissive comments like Iain's on this subject do not bode well.