This presents, I think, a fascinating insight into how the EU has become a near-unassailable concept among the commentariat. The technique is the same one used against all those who oppose globalism: ‘set them alongside the hairies who demonstrate at G20 Summits, and they will look like naive loonies’.

I’ve posted before on how the loopy-loos in UKIP are holding back the sensible opposition to the EU in Britain. The nature of controlling people (be they Lord Mandelson or Eric Pickles) is that they will smear, associate and draw parallels at every opportunity. And time-starved consumers of media soak it up like blotting paper.

And yet, in all this there is an ironic twist. For the bonkers behaviour of those who would slag off any and all opposition is awarding credibility to the very numpties they use to pull the rest of we normal folk into line.

The antics of the Brussels mafia lend a certain prescience to the UKIP barmpots. The lunacy of New Labour’s immigration policy hands votes on a plate to the BNP. The idiocy of social workers and their fellow-travelling cod psychotherapists bestows a dubious guru status upon Brian Gerrish and his fellow conspiracists. And the never-ending illegality of bankers, financial consultants and hedge funds can even serve to revive the fortunes of the Socialist Workers Party – that home of innately schismatic nutters who stick ineffectually to the destructive ideas of command economics.

It’s an oddly vicious circle this: the ideas and behaviours of deluded polemicists turning voters towards those who are simply delusional. One might observe that the first casualty is truth; but to be more exact, the last thing standing is realism. This (I hope and pray) they can never destroy.