Won’t this all be forgotten about in a few months?

On the face of it this should be the moment for UKIP. The build-up has been going on for months, the Murdoch press has been winding up the rhetoric and now the treaty is finally happening.

Yet according to the latest poll, the one in last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph from ICM, a paltry 3 people (NOT percent) said that their choice was the anti-EU party. Surely if this was the issue that Sun says it is then UKIP would be benefiting? Not so.

That poll also had two thirds of respondents saying they wanted a vote so you would think that Gord is taking a massive gamble defying public opinion and acting in a way that can be portrayed as a breach of a manifesto pledge.

Yet how much does the public really care – surely there are other issues that affect people more? This seems to be backed by other surveys. When the latest Ipsos-Mori monitor asked people to state which was the most important issue facing Britain today just 4% of those interviewed put the EU as their number one choice.

My sense is that Cameron has picked this up as well and his focus is not the EU but the apparent breach of trust that he says the decision represents.

As we have seen Brown do before we’ve got to a stage where being totally worked up about the EU can be portrayed as being a bit potty.

So will Gord and Labour face a polling hit following the events in Lisbon? My guess is that this issue won’t affect things very much. Gord has made his gamble and he will win.

Mike Smithson