Over the weekend, it was suggested to me (by an old hand who should know) that an informal win-win deal exists between the Number Ten Press Office and several nationals – notably the Guardian and Telegraph – to maximise anti-Farage-Kipper-looney stories.

I can well believe it…and further investigation by The Slog has at least partially confirmed it. The Brechtian Alan Rusbridger is always up for the Szechuan Lie, and the Channel Island Twins remain big fans of Boris Johnson: the last thing they want to see is BoJo’s Coronation compromised by the Upstart Farrago. Today’s count of Home page anti-UKip stories at the Daily Telegraph is five.There are a similar number at The Guardian (although not as prominent) but the difference there is that its most distinguished columnist Simon Jenkins continues to be carefully sceptical and scrupulously fair. This is what he wrote today:

 ‘Tarnishing Ukip as a racist party or castigating it as extreme has proved woefully counter-productive. People who oppose European integration do not like being branded racist. Ukip may be absurdly ramshackle; its policies may be as chaotic as its organisation. This is not at issue. As the vehicle for a point of view, Ukip is specific: it wants Britain “out of Europe”. A vote for Ukip on Thursday is not a vote for an MEP or a party, let alone a government. It is the closest to a referendum on Europe that Britain has been allowed this century, and it will be seen as such.’

There are, of course, two sides to the anti-UKip media storm:one says “It’s all a smear-plot” and the other says, “Well, no smears were ever so easy to evidence”. It’s hard to argue with either side. I think Farage is a casual, unthinking racist (as so many of his ilk are) but if you tot up all the minority views held by the Kipper candidates – about sex, marriage, capital punishment, foreigners, God, beer and lesbians – there’s the side of a barn to aim at every day.

But examining such evidence closely, it is the candidates and activists (not the Party’s followers) who have been shown to hold Looney-tune views. Now one can credibly argue that, were the media to take the trouble to scratch the surface of those followers, they would prove to hold the same views, if not worse. But that remains an unknown: if my experience is anything to go by, the vast majority of UK citizens voting UKip on Thursday will do so with but one aim in mind: to terrify the arrogant British Establishment.

As always, cynical pragmatism produces strange bedfellows. Simon Jenkins is, by contrast, a principled realist. For me, he represents what the Guardian-to-Left-Wing-Conservative axis used to think. No British political Party occupies that position any longer….and I’m sorry UKippers, but there is no way that the Faragista élite has either the organisation or the vision to fill it.

Until something or somebody does, the Parties on offer go no more than 15% towards persuading me that they deserve my vote….on the EU issue, or any other.

Earlier at The Slog: “Put that Light out!” squares up to the anti-panic brigade