ED MILIBAND is not a natural gambler. His inner circle resembles an intellectual salon, with a strong Harvard flavour. “People think we’re too professorial,” joke his intimates. “Shall we hold a seminar to discuss it?” For Christmas he handed out biographies of Theodore Roosevelt. But this week the Labour Party’s leader placed a big bet by all but ruling out a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union if Labour wins the next general election.

As the EU’s second-biggest economy, Britain is central to the club, yet it has mostly seemed uncomfortable there. It joined late and has become increasingly disaffected. The creation of the euro in 1999 pushed it further from the centre; over the past ten years, a torrent of migrants from new member states in eastern Europe has undermined Britons’ enthusiasm for membership and encouraged the growth of the anti-immigrant, anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party.

Plenty of Britons, including this newspaper, have long argued that there should be a referendum on membership of the EU, given the very different nature of the union from the one that Britain joined 40 years ago. As politicians have ducked the issue, anger has mounted. These days the referendum campaign is led mostly by those who simply want to leave. In January 2013 David Cameron, the prime minister, gave in to pressure from backbenchers in his party, who feel about the European Union much as rural Republicans do about gun bans, and promised to hold one in the first half of the next parliament—that is, by the end of 2017.

Until this week Mr Miliband avoided committing himself either way. Now he has made it clear that, unless there is a significant transfer of powers from Westminster to Brussels—probably in the form of a treaty change, which he does not expect to happen—he will not hold a referendum if he wins next year’s election.

The call he has made is a risky one for Labour. On the one hand, voters—who can always smell hypocrisy—will appreciate the fact that he is being true to his, and his party’s, instincts. The son of a Belgian Marxist father and a Polish mother, he was never going to convince as a little Englander, and Labour has come to see the EU as a handy way of advancing workers’ rights. Yet Mr Miliband has also provided Mr Cameron with a profitable new line of attack. Britons tell pollsters that they want a say over whether their country stays in the union, even if no more powers are transferred to Brussels. Mr Miliband’s refusal to promise a vote could confirm the view that he is out of touch with normal people (see article).

In a way, Mr Miliband’s call is a good one for Britain. Had Labour’s leader matched Mr Cameron’s promise, the country could well have dropped out of the EU by accident. If Mr Cameron wins the next election and holds a referendum, he will campaign to stay in and has a good chance of winning. But if Mr Miliband wins, the Tories will probably ditch Mr Cameron for a hardline anti-European; such a figure would have campaigned to leave in a referendum, and a grumpy mid-term electorate might well have agreed with him. Business is relieved: the prospect that Britain might fall out with by far its biggest export market worries banks and manufacturers almost as much as Labour’s anti-business rhetoric does.

Is you is or is you ain’t European?

In another way, though, Mr Miliband’s call is the wrong one. Britons ought to be given a say on their membership of the EU. Mr Cameron was wrong to promise a referendum in 2017, because the chances are that the mess caused by the euro crisis will not be cleared up by then, and Britons will still not know what sort of club they are voting to stay in or leave. Early last year a major EU treaty change seemed imminent, but now the prospect is receding.

Still, once things have settled down Britain needs to decide whether it is in or out. Until it does, the issue will continue to plague the country’s politics.