Will The Real Europeans Please Stand Up ?

As everyone knows, the EU has given rise to an unprecedented Golden Age of peace and universal love. All Europe is on one big flower train, running on love power. Except if we withdraw, at which point rampaging mobs will run through Nijmegen and Stockholm torching British businesses. Is it just me or do other people see a mixed message here ?

Of course, all this is part of the Pile-On D'Jour aimed at UKIP. As far as can be divined, the chattering class charge sheet has three entries on it:

1. Everyone in UKIP is weird
2. UKIPs Deputy Head of Publicity (Manchester) was reported by the SWP to have once said Hitler did a great job with the autobahns
3. And they smell too

So that's UKIP: weird, with some evil nuts in their ranks - quite unlike any other party then. Tam Dayell probably thinks it's a Jewish conspiracy.

In so far as any actual arguments emanate from the critics, it's this one: voting UKIP undermines Euroscepticism since it helps support the canard that anyone who opposes, say, the EU constitution, must secretly support withdrawl. Given that there is UKIP, and there are three lamestream mainstream parties which differ only in their beliefs about the timing and format of a United States of Europe, it is not obvious why voting UKIP means support for withdrawl, if voting for the mainstream parties doesn't mean supporting a EU Army.

Perhaps sensing that this argument is kind of weak, the critics have resorted to Nazi-spotting. They try to claim that UKIP support reveals the true face of Euroscepticism, as though opposition to the EU means that you're prima facia a racist loon or an isolationist kook. All that need be said is that if we're seeking to draw wider conclusions from the campaign, then the extreme reaction of the Eurofans to the news that the public - gasp! - might vote the wrong way doesn't speak well for their claim that the EU may be an anti-democratic organisation right now, but, y'know, some day it'll clean it's act up. The peasants won't be allowed to screw up the Brave New World, and that's final.

Needless to say, our not-so-Conservative Party is feeling the pressure. Is it just me or it weird to see the Tories embracing the same smears that are always used against them ? Whatever, but at least it should settle any remaining doubts that a Conservative government will offer anything more for Britian than the chance to drink the EU Kool Aid out of a straight glass. Who knows ? There may be something in the Samizdata theory about the UKIP breaking the Tories out of their Grandee obssessed trance.