This whole "EU Referendum" doolally

From The Daily Mail:

David Cameron's flagship promise to hold a referendum on Britain leaving the EU would not be legally binding, officials have warned.

The Prime Minister last night lashed out at Lib Dems and Labour for refusing to back Tory legislation on staging an in-out vote by 2017. But House of Commons analysis says that even if the Bill is passed, more votes by MPs and peers would be needed after the 2015 general election before a referendum could take place.

Yup. No Parliament can bind a future Parliament, we already knew this, but I don't see why we need to argue so heatedly over the timing and the wording and so on, because we already have a system and a timetable in place for this...

Every five years, there are elections to the EU Parliament (more or less simultaneously in all Member States) and it can't be too difficult just to add a further option on the ballot paper at the end of the list of parties/candidates which says "I would like the UK to leave the EU".

The Tories can just announce right now that this will apply at the next EU Parliament election, which is due in May 2014 (when they will still be in government). I can't see who could possibly be opposed to this* and so the other parties would be stampeded into supporting/accepting it.

[Consider: if you are a member of any voluntary organisation, there is usually a system of elections for leader, chairman, treasurer, captain etc, and maybe your chosen candidates are not up for election or they are, but don't win - you always have a further option which is not expressly on the ballot paper - which is simply to leave that organisation. And you can always change your mind later on and rejoin again later, provided you didn't kick up too much of a stink when you left.]

So at each EU Parliament election people will be able to choose who they'd like as an MEP if they want to stay in, or whether they don't want an MEP at all, sorted. And if we did leave, there's no harm in having a further referendum every five years to decide whether we want to rejoin. You never know, do you?

* No doubt the Lib Dems and the Green Party will gamble on not losing any votes - the only people who stand to lose votes are the Tories, who have the largest number of EU-sceptic voters. The Labour Party will be probably heartily indifferent and it will place UKIP in an interesting quandary - do they want to be on the ballot paper to stay on the EU gravy train and thereby implicitly support our continuing membership, or will they abstain in the hope that enough people vote for us to leave? I would imagine that there are a fair few people who would like to leave the EU who do not like UKIP, and that these people simply don't bother voting at EU elections.