The Daily Telegraph has been running non-stop drivel in the run-up this week to the Rochester by-election. It will be a disaster if Cameron loses, they’re saying. Actually, it’ll be the most predictable win in by-election history.

The Sarkograph has been using cod demographic nonsense to suggest that a win in Rochester will be much more significant than the win in Clacton, because the voters there have brains or professional jobs or some other such guff. It’s rubbish: Reckless is going to win in Rochester because (a) he is the sitting MP with an unfair head start on everyone else, and (b) every voter loves to kick the government in the scrotal sac.

I’ve been scanning the paper for over a week now, and not once have either of these glaringly obviously points been raised. In elections, ownership is 99% of the law.

Faisal Naraj’s offer of safe passage to Tory MPs merely reflects the fact that, in twenty years, his Party’s organisation has never managed to elect a single MP. And The Messiah himself has an unenviable string of UK failures to his name, prior to and following his election as an MEP in 2004.

I suspect that – being entirely boneheaded – the EU in general and Jean-Claude Juncker will play into UKip’s hands in the coming months. But it still remains a fact that UKip has never won a UK election to Parliament from scratch.

Earlier at The Slog: Mexican standoff of ECB vs Bundesbank threatens euro survival