Eu

Interviews with Ukip bigwigs used to happen in pubs. But times are changing. When I meet Patrick O’Flynn — the party’s economics spokesman, and until recently chief spin doctor — it’s in a juice bar. O’Flynn, a former political editor of the Daily Express who studied economics at Cambridge, is one of those driving Ukip towards professionalism. Ukip, he says, is the only party he’s ever joined, and it is ‘not part of the Conservative family’. That is why he rates its chances in northern Labour seats: ‘We didn’t close down any coal mines or steelworks and we’re not known as the patrician Home Counties rich people’s party.

We should all get used to reading stories about how Angela Merkel has warned David Cameron that if he persists with X, Y or Z she’ll no longer be able to support Britain staying in the EU. It is the nature of a negotiation that those involved in it will, at points, suggest that they will walk away if the other party continues to demand something. The skill is, obviously, to know whether the other person is bluffing or not. Now as Mats Persson points out, Merkel’s comments are not as definitive as they are being portrayed as in some places. But there is no getting round the fact that Merkel is determined to protect the principle of free movement while Cameron—ideally—would like to impose limits on it.

The House of Commons is in a febrile, nervy mood this afternoon. No-one is quite happy with anyone else. David Cameron raised a cheer when he told MPs that he will not pay the €2bn bill apparently sprung on him by the European Commission, but he had very little to say when pressed by Labour on how this surprise was quite so surprising given Treasury ministers were mentioning it in letters months ago. Ken Clarke made backbenchers glower and opposition MPs howl with glee when he told the Chamber he sympathised with the Prime Minister for being surprised by something everyone in the Foreign Office and Treasury had known about for months. Just to endear himself to the members around him, Clarke also defended the European Arrest Warrant.

If the European Commission had come to Britain demanding another £90 million because this country’s economy had performed better than expected, it would have been a political headache for David Cameron. The money would have been handed over and Ukip would have slapped it on to its election leaflets. But the Commission’s demand for £1.7 billion extra from Britain is so outrageous that it provides Cameron with a political opportunity. He can refuse to pay and hold up all other European business until the demand is dropped, rallying the country to his side as Margaret Thatcher did over the British rebate. One Cabinet Minister says excitedly of the row with the Commission, ‘This provides us with an opportunity to tell them where to get off’.

A visibly riled David Cameron railed at the European Commission's 'completely unacceptable' behaviour in demanding another £1.7 billion from Britain by the 1st of December. He warned that he certainly won't be paying this bill then, and that anyone who thinks he will 'have another think coming'.

This chart, courtesy of Mike Smithson, shows Ipsos-Mori's polling on British membership of the European Union. It shows support for leaving the EU is no higher now than it was 20 years ago. I'll wager this surprises you. As you can see, there has always been a constituency for leaving the EU. Public enthusiasm for the european project has always been conditional. Despite that, the unhappiness of a known known has generally proved more attractive than the uncertainty of a known unknown. (This, ahem, is also true of certain other constitutional questions with which we have wrestled recently.) But how can this be? How can UKIP be soaring in the polls even as public support for their greatest proposal sags?

Imagine if David Cameron actually meant it. Imagine if he really did follow through with his implied threat to campaign for Brexit in the absence of better terms from Brussels. You can picture the televised address. An oak-panelled background with a large union flag hanging sedately in the corner, the PM with that furrowed house-captain expression he sometimes does. The script pretty much writes itself. ‘All of you know how hard I tried to secure a new deal. I was often criticised for being too conciliatory, but it was my duty to do whatever was in my power to reform the EU. I have to tell you today that the Brussels institutions are not interested in — are perhaps not capable of — the reforms that I believe the British people want.

What a godsend to Ukip José Manuel Barroso must be.  On his recent short visit to the UK he not only managed to tell the British public that limits to immigration (desired by the overwhelming majority of the British public) would be ‘illegal’.  He also managed to tell us that if we left the EU, Britain would have ‘zero’ influence in the world. I do wonder who bureaucrats like Mr Barroso think they are going to persuade.  Are they simply relying on swaying or scaring us on the presumption that we have no historical knowledge or memory?  Because this latest message can’t possibly work, can it?  Most British people don’t feel we were an impoverished, backward and weakly nation before the EU came along and saved us.