The two extreme stances on Europe are equally wrong. UKIP would say “get out now, and hang the consequences”.

The Liberal Democrats, typified by some rather odd comments by their Parliamentary candidate in the Gazette letters page last week, would stay in Europe at any price.

There are many possible opinions on Europe. Mine is that we should be in a free-trade area allowing local businesses to buy and sell goods free of import/export tariffs; but that the vast growth of unelected bureaucracy from Brussels governing our every move is in no-one’s interests. Our government and Parliament should be in Westminster.

Is it not right that we should give the people their say over it in a referendum? That is exactly what the Conservatives were trying to write into the law of the land, were it not for the fact that the Lib Dems and Labour blocked it in the House of Lords.

Why are they so opposed to letting the people decide?

We need to enter into a renegotiation of the EU Treaties clawing back so many powers over law and order, business, foreign affairs and defence, the environment, working practices, social security measures and so much other sovereignty which we have ceded to Brussels. Those are matters which should be properly decided by our elected representatives in Westminster.

France and Germany will be reluctant to agree to our demands. A tough negotiation needs a tough sanction behind it. Only if Mr Cameron can say to Angela Merkel when she visits London in a couple of weeks: “We need some big concessions; otherwise I fear that the people will vote to leave the EU in three years’ time” will he stand a chance of success. And he can only do that if he can promise the people a true referendum on our membership.

So I would say again to the Labour and Lib Dem candidates who plan to stand against me in the 2015 General Election: why did your parties block the EU Referendum Bill in the House of Lords last week? Are you personally in favour of an EU referendum or not?

Do not answer with cheap personal attacks accusing me of being ‘anti-European’, which I am not. The people will have an opportunity to express their opinion of your answer as soon as the European Parliamentary elections on May 22. Then next year I will fight the General Election on a pledge to allow an EU referendum in 2017. Will you?