This all matters. These four papers have a combined readership of  somewhere between 10 and 12 million, but beyond that, their front pages are seen by millions more when people go to the supermarket, to buy sweets or cigarettes in the newsagents, to pay for petrol at the service station. They are shown on the late-night news bulletins and discussed on radio and television.
The front pages thus have an influence way beyond the rest of the paper. Passers-by who saw the "We're from Europe, let us in" or "12m Turks want to come to Britain" headings won't have seen the corrections published inside much later. The stories have had their impact, the false message has reached its target.

On May 23, I decided to start monitoring every paid-for mainstream national newspaper's referendum coverage for the final month of the campaign (you can see the results by clicking on any of the front pages on the home page). Had I had half an idea how draining the exercise would prove, I would never have embarked upon it. But the imbalance in the rightwing papers and the relative ambivalence of the left-leaning Mirror and Guardian made me gasp.

In masochistic mood, I then resolved to look at everything one paper - the Mail - had written about the referendum since the date was set in February. The cynicism was even more breathtaking. You can see how the battle lines were drawn on this blog post.

The fact that I focused on the Mail does not mean it was the only - or even the worst - sinner.
The Express has failed to put the Remain case anywhere, other than to report "outrage" and "fury" over its arguments. Over the past week or so it has run a daily back-of-the-book spread labelled "Why I'm voting Leave". No counter-view has been countenanced.
The Sun was rebuked by Ipso for its "Queen supports Brexit" front page. It carried the obligatory correction,  but the editor promptly said he stood by what he'd published -  knocking for six any hope that the new regulator would be seen as strong enough to restrain the Press and so save it from its detractors.
The Telegraph has at least allowed columnists to express a pro-Remain opinion.

For the past four months our two best-selling newspapers have poured buckets of manure over the Prime Minister they moved heaven and earth to get re-elected. They have played fast and loose with facts (which are inevitably thin on the ground, since no one can predict what will happen next week). They have discounted the opinion of every politician, financier, economist, businessman, scientist or academic who counsels caution - and God help any "luvvie" who dares to open their mouth. "Shove it in your cakehole", as the Sun so charmingly put it.

These are the very two papers that shouted loudest when the Supreme Court ruled that they couldn't publish the name of a celebrity whose sexual antics had been touted around the street. A privacy law by the back door?
They were right.
Yes, anyone who cared knew by that stage who the fuss was all about and, yes, the whole legal challenge started out of prurience. But it was a dangerous precedent.

There is nothing wrong with (and much to admire about) a Press that cocks a snook at authority, that refuses to be cowed. But if you want to be admitted into people's homes, to persuade the reader that you are their trusty friend, you have to be responsible and trustworthy.

The lead letter in this morning's Daily Express describes the paper as a "beacon of truth".  Social media may mock the hypochondriac weather-obsessed Express, but there are people who rely on it. They may be having their prejudices reinforced, but there are half a million buyers out there who really think hordes of undesirable johnny foreigners are waiting on the other side of the Channel to board a fleet of coracles to "sneak" into Britain.

Goodness knows what these papers will do on Friday if there is a vote to stay in the EU - or, indeed, if there is a vote to leave and it turns out that they have helped to bring down the Government they were so keen to elect last year. 
Do they have half an idea of what is likely to happen next? Or even know what they want? An administration led by Boris Johnson? Another general election that Labour - under a new leader - might win?

They rubbish Osborne and Darling's warnings about the need for an emergency budget in the event of a Leave vote.Yet (in company with pro-Remain papers) they blithely publish a Leave "manifesto" that promises Bills not only to get out of Europe but also to abolish VAT on domestic energy and other fantasy measures as though Gove and Johnson are an official opposition in a conventional general election. How will these Bills be put before Parliament?

In all their huffing and puffing about "the facts" and "the truth",  papers that claim to be "on our side" and "looking out for ordinary people" have failed to ask the simplest questions or give their readers any clear picture of the sequence of events that is likely to follow the vote on Thursday.
​
What's the solution?
Ipso has the power to fine a recalcitrant paper £1m - but we all know it won't use it. Even if it did, papers that passionately believe that the EU is a Bad Thing - and that the end of getting out justifies almost any means -  would probably consider half of Paul Dacre's annual income a price worth paying.
So retrospective punishment is unlikely to be meted out and would in any event be ineffective. It's too late. The damage has been done - to the reputation of the Press, and possibly to democracy itself.
Licensing is beyond the pale. So is any form of state regulation, however "triple locked" it may be.
Some call for Leveson 2, but that is supposed to deal with relations between the police and the Press and is hardly likely to result in a more effective form of regulation.

I really wish I had an answer.
Maybe Hugo Rifkind can offer one. What do we do when it's the "muzzled" Press that's wearing the jackboots?

It is not alone in following a pro-Leave agenda. The Express has been even more blatant, producing bigoted xenophobic papers that display the fearful selfishness of a child who has never been taught to share, toys clutched to his chest in case that unwelcome visitor from across the road might like to play with one. 
The Sun may be less mean-spirited, but it is also aggressively anti-Europe,  and the Telegraph has hardly been impartial. So why pick on the Mail?
Because it is the most dangerous.
The Sun is still - just - our top-selling newspaper, but its influence is waning; advertisers are deserting it and politicians no longer court it the way they used to. With circulations around the half-million mark (let's be generous), the Express and Telegraph aren't in the same league.
The Mail, though, is  by far the biggest news brand across print and web, reaching more than 10 million people every day. If Britain votes to leave the EU next week, the paper might well be justified in stealing the Sun's clothes and declaring "It was the Mail what won it".
Depending on your view of Europe, that might be a good thing for the country.
But it won't be a good thing for journalism.

For, however strongly the paper believes that the UK would be better off out of Europe, it still has a duty to abide by the Editors' Code (which happens to be
overseen by its own editor). That doesn't oblige a paper to be neutral or even to offer balanced coverage, but it does demand accuracy and a clear distinction between comment, conjecture and fact. 
The pro-Europe InFacts organisation has reported a number of papers to Ipso, complaining that they have failed to measure up on accuracy. Of course judgments won't be handed down before polling day, and we can expect plenty more transgressions in the final week. Short of having a licensed Press - heaven forbid - there is nothing any regulator, Leveson recognised or not, can do to stop them.
And, anyway, the Mail is a slick organisation - easily the most professional outfit in Fleet Street. It knows exactly how to maintain "accuracy" while pushing its own agenda. It is far more likely to get caught out mixing up comment, conjecture and fact. 
So I thought it would be an interesting exercise to look closely at the Mail's tactics.

7: Ian Botham and John Cleese. But not Matt Damon, Eddie Izzard, foreign luvvies or Dave's luvvie army.

8: Military leaders. But not environmental charities.

9: Norman Lamont, who was Chancellor on Black Wednesday. But not John Major, who appointed him.

10: Still in the past: David Owen and Nigel Lawson (whose son writes for the Mail). But not Michael Heseltine and definitely not "spiv" Peter Mandelson.

11: Former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove and former CIA boss Michael Hayden. But not former CIA chief David Petraeus.

12: Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey when he says immigration has reached dangerous levels, and present incumbent Justin Welby, when he says it's not racist to worry about immigration.
But Welby is not to be believed when he says the poor would suffer most from Brexit. On that we should trust Iain Duncan Smith who says the poor would suffer most from staying in.

13: Boris, when he says the EU is like the Third Reich. But not Dave, when he says it has saved us from war. 

14: Cameron and Osborne's fathers-in-law. But not Cameron or Osborne. 

15: Michael Gove's father if he's talking to the Mail or Star about his defunct fishing business. Bute not if he's talking to the Guardian or Mirror.

16: Any member of the public who challenges Cameron. But not any former living Prime Minister.
Dead ones, such as Churchill and Thatcher are to be believed if they are deemed to support the Brexit cause, but not if Fatty Soames starts spouting about his Grandad.

In the next few days, I shall try to count all the articles carried in the Mail, but that's going to take a while. What I can say is that there have been dozens of opinion pieces of which two - both by Max Hastings - have been in favour of remaining within the EU.
​The Express has run none.
In the meantime, the cloud below shows some of the headline words used in the Mail's news pages in relation to the Remain campaign.

Here is this morning's Sun splash. It's about a European Court ruling that France was wrong to imprison a woman with a false passport who was stopped at the Channel Tunnel. She was on a coach that had come from Belgium. 
The court ruled that people stopped travelling within the continent should be left free while deportation proceedings go through. The Sun has found a minister who sees this as "opening the floodgates to illegals" - and so providing the sub-head with its implied "to Britain".
Apart from quoting the minister, The Sun carefully refrains from putting UK on the front.
That's because the ruling does not apply to us, since we are not part of the passport-free Schengen area - as the Sun concedes in the final paragraph of the turn. Our authorities have every right to arrest and detain suspected illegal immigrants.
The judgment may seem daft. Yes, it would be more convenient for Britain if other countries stopped unwanted visitors en route (which, of course, the French did. Even if she hadn't been detained, she would not have been allowed to continue her journey), But the ruling was made in relation to a law that does not cover Britain. It may have an impact on us, but it is not one we are in a position to change - and certainly would never be in a position to change if we left the EU.
So, although this story appears to have been reported accurately, in this fevered anti-migration, anti-EU atmosphere, it comes across as dishonest propaganda. ​

This is how the Daily Mail viewed George Osborne after last year's March Budget.
t would be fair to say that there are now clouds over the relationship.
In those days, the paper was in the habit of calling the Chancellor George rather than Osborne. It was also chummy with Dave, the Prime Minister. 
Today it still calls him Dave - or Mr Cameron - but to demonstrate disdain rather than friendship or respect.
The Sun, too, was an admirer of "George" and it was as elated as the Mail when the Conservatives secured an outright victory over the dreaded "Red Ed" Miliband in last year's general election.
But newspapers can be fickle. The Mail - ever-ready to denounce anyone in public life who changes their stance on any given issue - now seems to relish every opportunity to give its former heroes a good kicking. And the Sun is happy to join in the bundle. Both papers have new best friends: Boris and Michael (whose wife, of course, writes for the Mail).
They would argue, of course, that it is the job of newspapers to hold those in power to account and that they have a responsibility to speak up when they believe the Government is not acting in the country's best interests.
If they continue on their current path and are ultimately successful in securing an "Out" vote in the referendum, there is a very good chance that their old friend Dave may have to hand the keys of No 10 to Boris Johnson. Let's hope the blond bombshell is prepared for the day his friends in the Press turn on him.
In the meantime, here's a reminder of how things were...

...and how they turned sour

The news presenter Jon Snow made headlines today with his complaint that the referendum battle was the worst-tempered, most boring and abusive campaign that he could remember. On Saturday Delia Smith wrote in the Guardian that the daily dose of scare tactics beggared belief and that the whole debate was "pants".
Instead of engaging the voters, our newspapers have done their bit to turn this pivotal decision for the future of the country into a pantomime. As Snow said in his piece for Radio Times, it's no way to run a chip shop.

Decent journalism involves listening to what people have to say, taking a view on how important it is, and covering it accordingly. Sometimes it is reasonable just to report what is said, along with any counter argument, and leave the readers to decide. At other times, the claims may be so contentious that they require some debunking. This can take the form of background in the body of the story, but it is often done best  in a sidebar, analysis or factbox.
That is what The Times did on Saturday with its own interview with Iain Duncan Smith.  It reported his assertions in a news story separate from the interview spread, and then let Economics Editor Philip Aldrick run the ruler over his claims in a "fact check" panel.

One of the disturbing features of this campaign is the number of stories that are blatantly slanted to favour one side of the argument - almost invariably the Leave campaign.
Detailed examples of such behaviour will follow later in the week, but the treatment of one story deserves closer examination.
​
On Saturday the i splashed on a Treasury Select Committee report of its inquiry into the economic and financial costs and benefits of the UK's EU membership. That may sound dry, but in its assessment of the conduct of the campaign so far, it was what we journalists like to describe as a hard-hitting report that pulled no punches.
Andrew Tyrie, the committee's Conservative chairman, accused the two sides of indulging in an "arms race of lurid claims" and of a "mountain of exaggeration". 
The introduction to the report states:

Of these "misleading" claims, Tyrie says that "by far the most serious" was the Leave campaign's assertion that Brexit would provide a £350m a week windfall that could be spent on the NHS.
Other claims questioned by the MPs included:

• George Osborne's statement in the foreword to a Treasury paper that "families would be £4,300 worse off" as a result of Brexit;
• that 3 million jobs were dependent on membership of the EU;
• that the cost of imports would rise by at least £11bn after a Brexit,
• that the CAP costs every household £400 a year in higher food bills,
• that EU regulations cost businesses £600m a week, 
• that households benefit by £3,000 per year from EU membership.

The committee, whose members come from all parties and both sides of the referendum debate,  was also scathing about the attitude to the committee's work of Vote Leave chiefs Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings. It described their behaviour as appalling and said they had failed to fulfil commitments made to the Electoral Commission that led to their being recognised as the official "Out" campaign.

The report - which makes the point that economics are only part of a debate that is really all about how the country (and Europe) should be governed - goes on to sift through the evidence presented by various witnesses and to emphasise the many imponderables in trying to picture the economic landscape after June 24. 
Right at the start it states:

For voters, this report is one of the most useful documents to have been produced so far in the campaign. It was released on the Friday before a bank holiday weekend - a relatively quiet news day - and should have been a godsend for papers with Brexit pages to fill.
​ After all, as Jon Snow says, the negativity, bickering, foul-mouthing and wholesale abuse of the facts by both sides had seen off most attempts to make the vote interesting.

Yet the Guardian, Telegraph, Express and Star ignored it.
The Guardian's only "news" coverage of the day was Delia's front-page rant.
The Telegraph was more interested in comparing the countryside credentials of David Cameron (pictured bottle feeding a lamb) and Boris Johnson (pictured driving a tractor).
The Express was extolling the virtues of "Boris and Farage, the Brexit dream team" and worrying about a woman who'd spoken up on television about migrants jumping the queue for a council house. 
The Sun and Mirror each gave the story a couple of pars. 
That left the i's splash, which ran to 15 pars as the lead on its spread, and a little ragged-right jobbie on the Times's EU spread (rather tastelessly illustrated with a mushroom cloud explosion, presumably on the back of the "arms race" allusion). And the Mail.
The Mail was mostly focused on rubbishing Treasury projections on the threat to pensions, but it led the third page of its referendum coverage on the select committee report. Under this heading:

A very large sub-head qualifies this by saying "Treasury panel savages In AND Out campaigns over misleading stats". But it is not until the fifth par of the text that we get the first mention of  the £350m windfall claim.
Ten of the sixteen paragraphs are devoted to questioning Leave campaign claims about household income and jobs; two are concerned with the £350m, including Tyrie's description of it as "by far the most serious offence".
So, if challenged, the Mail can legitimately say that the facts are there. It's just that - like the notes in Eric Morecambe's rendition of Grieg's piano concerto - they are not necessarily in the right order.

Naturally, long reports such as this have to be filleted to make them digestible for newspaper readers, but the end result should reflect the message of the original material. Especially when it comes from an independent source.
​
SubScribe commends the full report to anyone interested in making their own judgments about the possible risks and benefits of Brexit, but in the meantime, please bear with me as I quote some chunks of  what it says about the claims and counter-claims that the MPs found most egregious:

The £350m 'windfall'

At the heart of Vote Leave’s presentation of its case is the claim that, on leaving the EU, the UK Government would receive a windfall of £350m per week, available to be spent in other ways, “like the NHS and schools”. This, and the other figures used by Vote Leave for the UK’s EU budget contributions..are highly misleading to the electorate for a number of reasons.

First, Vote Leave’s £350m figure does not account for the budget rebate, which amounts to £85m per week. Leaving the EU could not make this money available to spend on schools and hospitals because it is not ‘sent’ to Brussels in the first place. The rebate does not leave the UK or cross the exchanges.

This is repeated in other ways. A ‘counter’ is prominently displayed on Vote Leave’s website. This purports to show that the UK has historically contributed £511bn to the EU since joining in 1973 and excludes the rebate. The UK rebate is indeed controversial in other member states. It may be raised in future negotiations over the EU’s financial framework. However, it can only be changed with the UK Government’s consent.

Secondly, the extent to which money that the UK receives from the EU budget (a further £88m per week to the public sector and £79m per week to the private sector and non-governmental organisations) would be available for spending on other priorities, would depend on the policy choices of the democratically-elected Government of the day. Vote Leave has stated that “There will [ … ] be financial protection for all groups that now get money from Brussels”. If that policy were implemented, the money available to fund other priorities after Brexit, such as schools and hospitals, would be much lower, and probably closer to the UK’s net contribution of £110 million per week than it is to £350 million. This would be true even if, as has been widely argued, efficiencies could be made in the way that money the UK currently receives from the EU budget is spent. 

Finally, it is not impossible that the UK may continue to make contributions to the EU budget after Brexit, either on a transitional or permanent basis, in return for continued access to parts of the single market, or because it considers mutual co-operation in certain areas, such as science research, to be desirable. This too would reduce the supposed fiscal windfall arising from leaving the EU. 

Vote Leave has said that £350m a week is “the core number”, and that it is using the number “again and again”. It is very unfortunate that they have chosen to place this figure at the heart of their campaign. This has been done in the face of overwhelming evidence...demonstrating that it is misleading.

Brexit will not result in a £350m per week fiscal windfall to the Exchequer as a consequence of ending the UK’s contributions to the EU budget. Despite having been presented with the evidence contradicting this claim, Vote Leave has subsequently placed the £350m figure on its campaign bus, and on much of its recent campaign literature. The public should discount this claim. Vote Leave’s persistence with it is deeply problematic. It sits very awkwardly with its promises to the Electoral Commission to work in a spirit that reflects its “very significant responsibility” and the “gravity of the choice facing the British people”. 

The effect of Brexit on household incomes

Figures purporting to measure the overall impact of EU membership or Brexit on GDP and household incomes are only meaningful if the counterfactual – the assumed alternative to EU membership – is clearly spelled out...This is not the case for the £3,000 figure used by the Stronger In campaign, or indeed any number that combines the findings of different studies with different counterfactuals. 

Most recent studies support remaining in the EU and find that Brexit decreases the UK’s openness to trade with the EU, which, other things being equal, causes a decline in investment and productivity. The key question is how far these negative effects are offset by the scope for increased openness to trade with the rest of the world, productivity gains from deregulation, and lower contributions to the EU budget...

Those who favour leaving the EU would argue that these studies are insufficiently optimistic or imaginative about how the UK would fare outside the EU. They could be right...

Even if the assumptions underpinning it are considered to be reasonable, the Treasury’s £4,300 figure is the result of two economic modelling exercises and a further assumption about the relationship between trade and economic productivity. Each of these three stages introduces uncertainty. Any specific numbers emerging from such an analysis should be subject to caveats and seen within the context of the forecast range presented by the Treasury...
​Presenting the figures on the impact of Brexit on a per household basis, as the Stronger In campaign has done, is likely to be misconstrued by readers, especially in the heat of a campaign, and probably has confused them. It may have left many readers thinking that the figures refer to the effect of leaving the EU on household disposable income, which they do not. The Remain campaign should have been alert to this risk...

The Treasury’s analysis contains a foreword from the Chancellor suggesting that “families would be £4,300 worse off” as a result of Brexit. But this is not what the main Treasury analysis found; the average impact on household disposable incomes would be considerably smaller than this number, which refers to the impact on GDP per household. Neither government departments nor other spokespeople for the remain side should repeat the mistaken assertion that household disposable income would be £4,300 lower than if we were to remain in the EU...to persist with this claim would be to misrepresent the Treasury’s own work...

It is disappointing that the Treasury and the Chancellor place so much emphasis on a single figure. Any single number that purports to encapsulate the effects of Brexit can be misunderstood...Using the range around this estimate — £3,200 to £5,400 — as well as a central forecast, and looking at average household income would both be useful ways of presenting the Treasury’s results. 

Trade tariffs

The Stronger In campaign’s claim that the cost of imports could rise by “at least” £11bn as a result of Brexit – and associated claims that leaving the EU would raise household bills – assumes that the UK will place the same tariffs on imports as does the EU currently. Given that the pursuit of an independent trade policy is at the heart of the case for leaving, this seems to be an implausible assumption. The figure of £11bn is therefore unhelpful and tendentious and should not be used without extensive explanation. 

CAP and food bills

The figures used by some leave campaigners that the CAP costs £400 per household per year is based on out-of-date research. Using more up-to-date sources gives a figure that is much less than £300.

In any case, to suggest that this money would be “saved by Brexit” requires two assumptions to be made: that the Government would unilaterally eliminate all tariffs on agricultural goods on leaving the EU; and that it would not replace any of the subsidies and price support currently provided to UK farmers under the CAP.

This is inconsistent with Vote Leave’s stated position that farmers will be paid “at least as much as they get now” and Leave.EU’s position that farmers will not lose the money they currently receive from the EU. It is true that the UK is effectively a net contributor to the CAP. It is widely acknowledged, even by Lord Rose [head of the Stronger In campaign], that the money currently distributed to UK farmers through the CAP could be spent more efficiently. Nonetheless, the overall saving would fall short – perhaps well short – of £300 per household.

Employment

It is misleading to claim, as some campaign groups continue to do, that 3 million jobs are dependent on EU membership. Britain Stronger in Europe, the lead remain campaign group, has at least made clear in evidence to this committee, if not in some of its literature, that its use of the 3 million figure should not be taken to represent the number of jobs dependent on EU membership, but the number associated with trade with the EU.

Without an estimate of how much trade would be lost as a result of Brexit, the impact on job losses cannot readily be estimated. The wider public might form the mistaken impression that all these jobs would be lost or at risk if the UK left the EU. Campaigners should be clear that 3 million jobs may be associated with, but would not necessarily be dependent on, our membership of the EU. 

A reduction in exports to the EU following Brexit would lead to a loss of jobs unless there were compensating effects from faster growth in trade with non-EU countries or to the extent that the UK’s relatively flexible labour markets meant that any impact from lower trade may be felt through lower wages than otherwise and a reduction in hours worked, rather than through the unemployment rate. 

Regulation

Withdrawing from the EU would give the UK an opportunity to alter the way its economy is regulated in some areas...It may save firms and consumers some money in the process. Open Europe itself considers that the maximum feasible regulatory savings from Brexit are £12.8bn per year, although achieving even these might involve political controversy.

Examples that Open Europe have counted under this category to reach this figure include: relaxing rules protecting workers’ entitlement to time off; holidays and redundancy protection; abandoning the current target for increasing the share of energy generated from renewable sources; and abandoning financial regulations such as emergency bans on “short-selling”, reporting and disclosure requirements and a cap on bankers’ bonuses.

In some cases, such as maternity rights and bank capital requirements, the UK currently regulates beyond the minimum EU standards.

Realising gains from deregulation would require the Government of the day to muster support for a new domestic approach. However, a future government would undoubtedly judge that the compliance costs of some, perhaps many, EU regulations are more than offset by the benefits.

In evidence to the committee, Vote Leave pointed out that what counts is not so much the cost, but the principle of having control over such regulations. This is reasonable. It may be a compelling political argument.

But if they wish to make a case on economic grounds, and use as they have done, figures purporting to measure the economic cost of EU regulation, it is incumbent on the leave campaigns to give at least some indication of which parts of the regulatory framework they would alter or scrap...
​
£33.3bn, or £600m per week, is an estimate of the total cost to firms of complying with the top 100 most "burdensome" EU regulations. It is not the net economic cost of regulation, nor is it a measure of the savings that would accrue to businesses as a result of Brexit. To assert this is misleading.
To persist with such a claim, as both Vote Leave and Leave.eu have done, is a tendentious representation of the research on which it is based.

You can read the full report here

Every paper has its regular opinionators, but a campaign like this calls for a few extra guns - preferably big ones - in the armoury. So SubScribe thought it would run a ruler over who's writing for whom.

The Guardian today calls on the services of Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, who declares:

"The EU referendum is an internecine dispute among the privileged, who use tub-thumping nationalism as a way of convincing others that they hold a stake in this pathetic game...
"Whether you back red or black in the tawdry crumbling casino of neoliberalism, and whatever the slimy croupiers of the mainstream media urge, it's the house that invariably wins."

So no guidance on which way to vote there, then. What about another guest columnist whose image couldn't be further from that of the spiky Welsh: mumsy Delia Smith?  
Well, she, too, was feeling pretty exasperated with the politicians on Saturday:
 
"The now daily dose of scare tactics simply beggars belief, and do you know what? It so isn't working. Because at this stage we voters are just reduced to having a laugh. What else can you do when you are told there are 70 million Turks lining up, like the Zulus in the Stanley Baker film, coming over the hill set on seizing our jobs, our homes our lives....
"Frankly the current state of politics is pants in this debate."
She does, however, finally declare herself as firmly "in".

Also backing Remain on Saturday was Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister who had to quit in the middle of his country's refinancing shambles last year. He, like Walsh, detects a plot by the privileged to keep the proletariat in their place:

"The reason public services are failing is the rolling austerity that cloaks a vicious class war against Britain's poor; a war that would have happened even if the UK border were hermetically sealed. 
"Indeed, without the labour, skills and dedication of migrants the NHS annd other services would have collapsed. Lest we forget, turning the native poor against migrants is a variant of the divide-and-rule trick the British establishment honed to dominate the empire. Today it uses the same strategy to dominate the domestic 'natives', hide austerity's effects and deflect anger towards the other - the foreigner, the migrant."

The day before, shadow business secretary Angela Eagle was fretting about another downtrodden majority: women. She noted that one in six people discussing Europe on television was a woman, in the Press it was one in ten, and the ten politicians receiving the most coverage were all men.

"It [the campaign] is overwhelmingly dominated by men, Cameron and Osborne on one side; Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage on the other. It is coming across more like an Eton playground spat than a serious debate about the future of our country...
"Whatever progress women make, the pattern seems set. Whenever an election is called, it's like a trapdoor opens beneath the chairs of every female politician and we simply disappear from the scene. As soon as the campaign kicks off, our politics regresses to a bygone men-only era."

Most Guardian columnists are in favour of staying in the EU, but on Thursday the paper gave a platform to Eurosceptic MP John Redwood, who predicted that David Cameron would have a tougher time controlling his party in the event of a Remain victory next month. As we've seen this weekend, the Prime Minister didn't have to wait that long for the stirrings in the ranks. Redwood says of Britain's attitude to Europe:

"Most of us don't want to join the euro and we wish to stay aloof from the common frontiers of the free-travel Schengen area. This makes our relationship with the EU fraught with tension and trouble. It's like joining a football club, then announcing you have no intention of either playing in or watching matches, and think the club subscription is too large. You just want to eat meals in the club cafe, which you could do anyway without joining the club."

The Telegraph has little call for guest writers, being the home of the biggest hitter of all - Boris Johnson - plus the likes of William Hague and Roger Bootle. 
Last week, however, it offered a berth to former Tory trade secretary Peter Lilley, who wrote:

"The single market is talked about as if it were some inner sanctum accessible only to a privileged few. In fact, every country has access to the single market, with or without tariffs. The single market involved harmonising rules - sensible, since businesses can make one product for the European market, not 28. But that benefits American and Japanese exporters as much as German or British firms. 
"People assume Britain benefits from participating in setting these rules. But rules provide a framework within which all companies operate - not an advantage to any country. Britain set the rules of tennis but rarely wins Wimbledon."

Most Telegraph columnists are of the Leave persuasion, but today the paper has offered hospitality to an interesting choice of Remainer:  Andy Coulson, he of phone-hacking shame and causer of great embarrassment to the Prime Minister in his incarnation as director of communications at No 10. SubScribe cannot but wonder if there were more than a hint of mischief in this commission. Yes, Coulson is well-placed to comment on Steve Hilton, another former Cameron aide who stirred a bit of spice into the pudding last week with a suggestion that the Prime Minister was a closet Brexiteer. But there will also surely be Telegraph readers who won't believe a word Coulson says. So the paper can appear to be even-handed in the full-knowledge that his pro-Remain arguments will be discounted - if, indeed, they are read at all. 
Recalling his time working with Hilton in Downing Street, Coulson writes:

"We clashed only when Hilton Airways set a course for La-La-Land with policies that promised, in an instant, to make us happier, more powerful and altogether cooler citizens...all to be announced against the backdrop of historic budget cuts...
"So watching Question Time brought a sense of deja vu. For Steve and the Leave campaign made the same promises of a better life, but without  ever telling us how. For them, Brexit would transform Britain overnight into a happier, more powerful and altogether cooler country, flowing with cheaper, home-produced milk and organic honey...
"Therein lies the Leave campaigners problem. They want revolution but they haven't the first clue what will happen one day, one year or one decade later."

Hilton had, of course, burst into the debate courtesy of the Daily Mail and an extract from his forthcoming book in which he writes:

"As long as we are members, our country cannot be 'run'. Membership of the EU makes Britain literally ungovernable, in the sense that no administration elected by the people can govern the country....membership of the EU brings with it contraints on everything from employment law to family policy, all determined through distant centralised processes we hardly understand, let alone control...
"One way of thinking about this referendum is that the choice is not actually between staying and leaving - but between leaving and joining a new EU.
"Because an EU after a British vote to stay would be a very different creature from the one we have today.  It would be an EU unleashed, freed from the constraints of having to placate the pesky British with their endless complaining and threats to leave. 
"Once they know we will never leave, all leverage will be gone."

Apart from giving Max Hastings a page to argue in favour of staying in the EU, Mail columnists have all been pro-Brexit. As with the Telegraph, the paper mainly uses in-house talent, but it is keen on employment minister Priti Patel, who told the Prime Minister that he was too posh to understand worries about immigration. Last week it ran a short piece by her to accompany a story about the Operation Black Vote seesaw poster in which she wrote:

"The insulting idea that racism is the driving force behind the Brexit campaign is increasingly voiced by Remain supporters...
"It is not racist to be concerned about the unsustainable pressures on our civic infrastructure...
"The EU is the real force for extremism in Europe because, through its calamitous policies on migration and the single currency, it is creating ever greater political disillusion. That in turn is feeding the growth of far-right movements."

The paper also looked beyond Kensington to find an author for its Saturday essay this weekend. It came up with David Coleman, professor of demography at Oxford University, whom it describes as one of the country's top population experts. The standfirst to the piece begins "With academic objectivity...", which sounds commendable - if only the paper had mentioned somewhere that Coleman is the co-founder of Migration Watch, which is not renowned for its objective attitude towards immigration.
Coleman is of the view that white Britons will be in a minority in this country within fifty years if immigration is not curbed. He spells out various ways that net migration could be reduced, including a UK exit from the EU:

"A post-Brexit government could decide to limit entry from the EU, possibly favouring highly-skilled migrants. Indeed, there would be little point in Brexit without such measures. That would restrict EU inflows, most of which are in low-paid work. 
"Further expansion of the EU is likely to increase migration even more. The apparently relentless drive to the East by the EU Commission will activate further sources of migration as more poor countries are embraced by the EU. Looking to the future, citizens of possible new accession countries (such as Albania, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Turkey, Bosnia and Kosovo) will be eligible for work in the UK once they join.
"The long-run migration potential from those countries is highly uncertain — but it is likely to be large. In case this seems fanciful, recall that an estimated one-third of the population of Albania is already thought to be living in Western countries."

With the Daily Mail so stridently pro-Brexit, it follows - if you believe Private Eye's view of the rivaly between editors Paul Dacre and Geordie Greig - that its Sunday sister would take the counter view. And so it was that John Major popped up in the MoS yesterday to "savage boorish and sneering" Brexiteers, whom he accused of distorting the truth, political trickery and of irresponsible and provocative oratory on immigration. He continues:

"It's an absolute mess. No wonder the British people are left baffled, bewildered and confused. They need to know what all this would mean for their future, but Vote Leave are in such a muddle themselves that none of them seems willing or able to explain it to others...
"Vote Leave has consistently failed to tell us how they see the UK outside Europe. They have glib slogans, but no solid detail. They know what they are against, but have no agreed position on what they are for. Some of the leaders of Vote Leave are my fellow Conservatives. Others are experienced parliamentarians. I don't doubt their patriotism, nor their commitment to their cause. But I am dismayed by the way in which they have conducted this campaign, which I believe to have been a fraud on the British people.
"They have, knowingly, told untruths about the cost of Europe. They have promised negotiating gains that cannot – and will not – be delivered. They have hailed alleged advantages of leaving Europe, while ignoring even the most obvious obstacles and drawbacks. They have raised phantom fears that cannot be justified, puffing up their case with false statistics, unlikely scenarios and downright untruths. To mislead the British nation in this fashion – when its very future is at stake – is unforgivable."

By way of balance, the paper also hosts pro-Leave MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who writes:
"Whatever the outcome, the verdict of the British people has to be respected. There can be no excuse for a second referendum, however narrow the margin of victory for either side. There can be no rerun of the contest just because one side does not like the outcome. I say this even in the unlikely event of a Remain victory on June 23. If the British people vote to stay, then I will have to accept that, and shut up. 
"But if – as I expect – we vote Leave, then that result should also be respected, not simply taken as an incentive for Brussels to offer amended membership terms to persuade us to stay. 
"A Leave result cannot merely be a supplication for a little Bisto to be added to the thin gruel of the Prime Minister's renegotiation. It is a final choice. Less happy lands without confidence in their abilities have been bullied into voting again. This cannot happen to the United Kingdom."

Major was not the only former Prime Minister on parade yesterday: Tony Blair was pressed into service for the Sunday Times, where he was put head-to-head with former Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen. 
Blair's attitude could be interpreted by Leave campaigners as the ultimate expression of "Project Fear", with its central message: "If in doubt, stay." Explaining why, he writes: 

"We’re not asking the blue-sky question of whether we should be there; we’re living in a landscape whose ground has been shaped by our presence over many years. Retreating from this would be painful — and not a little painful, but a long, agonising process of disengagement, all the while with a pall of uncertainty hanging over us...
"It’s not scaremongering; it’s a warning. Leaving the European single market — by volume, the biggest commercial market in the world — is a seismic economic decision. It would be a betrayal of the British interest by exiting what was a British achievement.
"To be worth the risk, leaving would have to entail not a marginal benefit but an overwhelming raison d’être."

Owen - who also popped up backing Remain in an interview for the Telegraph on Saturday - had no such qualms about taking a leap of faith:

"Facing a period of readjustment for two to three years while we leave a dysfunctional EU, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Every year that the UK can spend transitioning out from the EU will be well spent. We have already switched 10% of our EU exports to world markets over the past 10 years. We can speed that up considerably outside the EU. 
"In EU which creates, and then cannot deal with, the structural flaws in its eurozone is not one we would have joined and is one we should leave. The single currency changed everything. Its basic design, opposed by the Bundesbank, is unworkable...
"No one knows when the eurozone crisis will morph into a collapse, at which point every country within the EU risks collateral damage. The fact that the UK is not a member of the eurozone does not mean we will escape unhurt...
"International leaders believe that if they can postpone Britain’s exit then they can put in place in their own countries sufficient insulation to reduce the shock wave of a eurozone collapse: they are entitled to do so but not at our expense."
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