It would be a serious mistake (and one that many commentators are making) to view the swivel-eyed loon vote at the Euro elections as showing that Britain is becoming seriously anti-EU.

Less than 10% of the ‘likely to vote in a general election’ electorate view Ukip as the party “closest to their own views on Europe”. It’s safe to assume that no more than 1% of the remaining 91% disapprove of Ukip because it’s too *moderate*… so how could Ukip get 16% of the vote?

The most intuitively appealing possibility is that pretty much everyone who agreed with Ukip’s European stance bothered to turn out in the elections, whereas many pro-Europeans didn’t. This works, as long as we also assume that everyone who agreed with Ukip’s views on Europe voted Ukip: overall turnout was two-thirds that of a general election (making the explanation statistically possible), but was also higher than in Euro elections before the Ukip started ‘seriously’ campaigning (adding credibility too).

In other words, a higher proportion of swivel-eyed-loon acolytes hate Europe enough to have bothered voting, whereas a higher proportion of sane people are aware that the elections don’t really have that much impact and therefore didn’t vote. This is good news, in that it implies the forces of sanity and reason would win any EU referendum with serious consequences.