What the papers say...

Mark Steel of the Independent says:

The EU may well be anti-democratic and wasteful, but if we vote to come out it seems we’ll be run by a Conservative Party led by characters who delight in tearing up agreements. There’s probably a European Statute on Refraining from Burning Witches they can pull out of, and a clause in the Lisbon Treaty that says asylums shouldn’t make a profit from charging people to squirt vinegar at the mentally ill.

This is why we should be grateful to people like Boris Johnson and Iain Duncan Smith, because every time they say something about Europe, they make it clearer which way to vote in the referendum.

Normally I wouldn't give two hoots what anyone in the Independent says but this is becoming an increasingly common view on social media. They've seen the weak arguments of the leave side and people are taking a long hard look at who is making them. Between Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings they have made a pigs ear of it.

We had hoped that we'd advanced the debate beyond bent bananas. Even Ukip wouldn't have been that crass, but blundering Johnson has pushed the factory reset button on euroscepticism, taking it back to day one - reinforcing the perception that eurosceptics are cranks.

It has also been noticed that Brexit the Movie is a love-in for all the libertarian Tory right - all climate sceptics and all broadly anti-NHS.

In basic terms, the Leave campaign is the 2009 incarnation Ukip without the fixation on immigration. Deeply unpopular ideas with a seriously poor attitude. It has boxed itself into a cul-de-sac with nowhere to go, with lead arguments that can be effortlessly demolished. If it was a political party it would be unlikely to score a single MP. It is not going to win over the swing vote in a referendum. They make the leave campaign look like a bunch of total amateurs.

Vote Leave has done nothing to reassure voters or opinion formers. It has not set out an alternative, it has not won the respect of anybody outside the eurosceptic blob and it has not made the voters an offer they cannot refuse. By every single measure of an effective campaign, it has failed.

We have been utterly betrayed by Vote Leave and Boris Johnson. They have utterly wrecked our credibility and may well deliver a catastrophic defeat that sees the issue buried for a generation. I rather suspect that is why Johnson volunteered his services in the first place. Vote Leave were fools to roll out the red carpet for him.