Eurosceptic newspapers are too competitive to work together on a referendum

Polly Toynbee of the Guardian believes that the Daily Mail is responsible for most of what is wrong with this country. When she learnt that the paper was intending to hold its own referendum on the new European constitution, the streets of Clapham, where Polly has her house, began to tremble. ‘Who runs the country?’ she demanded to know in her column of 21 May. The answer was that the ‘right-wing press barons’ with their ‘raucous bullying’ want to. The Daily Mail was naturally the worst offender. Its decision to have its own plebiscite was ‘a crude usurpation’. Polly seemed to think that the paper was asking the citizens of Britain to make a judgment about ‘an as yet unformulated EU constitution’, though in fact it was merely asking them to vote on whether or not they wanted a proper referendum.

Despite Polly’s fears, there is as yet no evidence that the Daily Mail is running the country. Looking out of my window, I am glad to say that I do not see any of its executives patrolling the streets. Its polling day has come and gone with the world taking almost no notice, though the paper itself worked up a considerable head of steam. (I should remind readers that I write a column for the Mail.) Nearly 1.7 million people – slightly less than one third of the newspaper’s total readership – took part in the referendum on 12 June. Of these, 89.8 per cent were in favour of a referendum. A poll carried out by ICM for the paper of nearly 50,000 people – an enormous sample by normal polling standards – produced almost identical results.