Political column January 25

By Jove, I think I've got it.

It is a sure-fire way to stop Brexit.

With UKIP in trouble, is it not time to start a party which is a sort of mirror image?

Yes, let me predict here and now the advent of EUKIP (European Union - Keep In Please). It might not necessarily be called that, but it will be a new political force dedicated to stopping, or if that is too late reversing, Brexit.

David Cameron famously described UKIP members as fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists. In similar vein the EUKIP members, implacably and indomitably opposed to Britain's departure from the EU, will come to be called "Brexists."

The logic for creating a new ad hoc one-issue political party is irresistible.

The success of Nigel Farage's UKIP is a template for how these things can effect change and seize the mainstream political agenda.

In calling for a second referendum (actually, it would be a third), Tony Blair, Sir Nick Clegg, Chuka Umunna, and others who have "accepted the referendum result" but are not yet ready to admit that they haven't really, have a problem.

Tony argues that in a democracy The People have a right to change their mind if circumstances change. (He doesn't mean after 41 years, but in less than two years.)

That raises the question of how to judge that the public view has changed sufficiently to justify the bother and expense of calling that new referendum.

One answer is that Tony, Sir Nick, Chuka & co will feel it in their waters.

As Chuka goes about the streets of London, he is already detecting widespread common opposition to Brexit.

The alternative to relying on their intuition is to look for something more concrete, like movement of the opinion polls. Already one recent poll has shown that 55 per cent of The People now want to Remain.

How short, though, memories are. Last year, buoyed by opinion polls which showed the Tories out of sight, Theresa May called a general election. She lived politically to regret it.

In the 2015 general election campaign, all the opinion polls pointed to a hung Parliament and the only one that didn't was kept quiet as it was presumed to be an embarrassing outlier. The continuing theme of the campaign was an assumption that there would need to be a coalition government. In fact, the Tories won an outright majority.

And in 2016, David Cameron went to bed on June 23 to sleep soundly with the reassurance of the latest polls which showed that Remain would win.

Indeed, opinion polls in the years beforehand seemed to suggest the British public couldn't care less about the EU issue, with it being so low down their priorities as to be invisible.

Objectively, the only level of expertise the opinion pollsters have shown in recent times is an expertise in consistently getting things badly wrong.

On this evidence, anyone in politics who sets any store by opinion polls must be bonkers.

So what are Tony, Sir Nick, and Chuka going to do? The answer is simple. As Harold Macmillan might have said: Votes, dear boy, votes.

Enter EUKIP. EUKIP would put up candidates in by elections and council elections.

Turn back the clock and consider why David Cameron gave a commitment to hold an in-out referendum. It was because UKIP was gaining ground and gaining votes.

By granting a referendum, which he took for granted would vote for continued EU membership as that is what the opinion polls told him, he would shoot the UKIP fox, and settle the issue for a generation.

So it was UKIP which created the circumstances for the 2016 referendum through democratic pressure, winning council seats and taking votes from the Tories.

Its mirror image, EUKIP, would have plenty of tacit support from both the Tory and the Labour benches, and would certainly be well financed by big business.

By garnering real votes from real voters in a specifically pro-membership cause, it would be an agent for change and for pressure in Westminster.

With Tony Blair and Sir Nick Clegg damaged brands, Chuka Umunna, who is disaffected from the Corbyn strand of Labour, would be the obvious person to chair the party. The headquarters would be in London.

It might prove too late to have an impact before Article 50 becomes operative, but EUKIP could mount a continuing political guerrilla campaign for years, just as UKIP did.

When the UK leaves the EU at the end of March next year, a lot of people will think it's all over.

Non, nein, no, Thanks to EUKIP, it will only have just begun.