If it wasn't for me

We have just come across this rather amusing snippet from Labour leadership contender Ed Balls who, we learn via the Today programme, single-handedly prevented Britain from joining the euro in the latter part of the last decade (and the first part of this decade)

Ed Balls has previous on this - but has never been quite so bare faced in his determination to claim ALL the credit for the decision not to join the Euro:

“On the Euro, I think most people would say, if it hadn’t been for me, we may well have joined the single currency”

Where the problem comes is with the notion that the Labour Government would have been able to 'sow up' Britain's entry into the euro but for Balls' intervention. Additionally - it is a revealing portrait of how voters were treated on all things EU under the previous Government. What about the small matter of the referendum that would have been required? Does Balls not think the public might have had a rather more important say in the matter?