David Cameron’s plot to keep us in the EU (it’s working)

I write this before the results of the European elections, making the not very original guess that Ukip will do well. Few have noticed that the rise of Ukip coincides with a fall in the number of people saying they will vote to get Britain out of the EU. The change is quite big. The latest Ipsos Mori poll has 54 per cent wanting to stay in (and 37 per cent wanting to get out), compared with 41 per cent (with 49 per cent outers) in September 2011. If getting out becomes the strident property of a single party dedicated to the purpose, it becomes highly unlikely that the majority will vote for it. The main parties will conspire to push the idea of EU exit to the fringe. Waverers will wobble towards the status quo. It will be 1975 all over again, which is surely what David Cameron has always intended.

On Saturday night, the power of the internet hit me. Email after email, all from Turks, protested that Turkish television censors the truth, and sent me clips allegedly showing the Prime Minister Recep Erdogan punching a man protesting about the recent atrocious mining disaster. They begged me (and presumably lots of other journalists) to expose what had happened. Unfortunately, the clips are of poor quality and do not really prove their point; but in fact the British press had already published an image of Erdogan’s spin doctor, the young Malcolm Tucker of Ankara, putting his well-heeled boot in. The benefit of the web is that such news cannot easily be hidden. The disadvantage is that by Sunday morning, I had received 100 identical messages, and there seemed no reason, in principle, why I should not receive one from every Turk with a computer and a dislike of Mr Erdogan.