Only careful readers of last Tuesday's Daily Mail would have noticed a quarter-page advert for the UK Independence Party. For followers of the anti-European movement, the ad carried familiar slogans: Say No to the European Union; Immigration out of Control; Blair to Sign Away Britain's Right to Govern Itself; Our Politicians Do Not Listen. Familiar, but now very potent slogans, as the EU constitution, terrorism, immigration and what Alastair Campbell aptly described in his diary as 'this huge stuff about trust' produce an intoxicating brew which induces fear and anger in equal proportions.
For UKIP the small advert was a taste of what's in store in the run-up to June's European elections. What appeared to be the nuttiest of fringe parties won three Euro seats and 11 per cent of the vote in the Euro-hating South West last time round in 1999. Its victories were bought on a campaign budget of just £60,000. In 2004, UKIP has already raised £500,000 and is expecting another £500,000 before polling day. The party has booked 1,054 poster sites - the first anti-European billboards will go up this week - and plans to distribute six million leaflets. Call centres and press advertising will encourage converts to join a party which is being advised by two of the 1990s' leading media manipulators -Britain's Max Clifford and Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's strategist, whose Machiavellian tactics inspired loathing and awe in the American political class.
The official line is that UKIP's move into the glitzy world of modern electioneering has been made possible by the gen erosity of the little people of old England. 'We don't have big corporate donors like the others,' said Mark Croucher, the party's spokesman. 'Like myself, most of our members earn a pittance.'
There's truth in that. On the one hand, UKIP represents small-town eccentrics far from the centres of power - Jeffrey Titford, one of its Euro MPs, has been known as the Frinton Undertaker since he combined running an east coast funeral business with burying the monsters of Brussels. On the other, it is home to the wilder theorists of the Right - the party is forever having to institute purges of BNP infiltrators. Half UKIP's members are entitled to claim the reduced rate for pensioners when they pay their subscriptions.
Yet although mockery of the rag-tag coalition comes easily, it's a little too pat to dismiss UKIP as a bunch of fruitcakes. There are a lot of people who don't want Britain's relationship with the EU renegotiated or loosened. They want to finish it. They aren't represented in Parliament because not even the Tories have dared to call for withdrawal.
Fears about immigration aren't entirely the creation of the press, which, in any case, has to reflect the prejudices of its readers if it is to sell papers. Despite Michael Howard's revitalising of the Tory Party, there's a significant section of conservative opinion which won't be happy with anything less than Little England taking on the world. Howard notwithstanding, there are Tory defections to the UKIP camp every few weeks, occasionally with dramatic effect at the level of local councils. The party's boast that it is a grass-roots uprising against the Westminster and Brussels elites appears valid, until you follow the money.
In the 1990s, people like me argued that corporate donors were taking over politics. Rather stupidly we underestimated the political consequences of the huge extremes of wealth and poverty. What need is there for corporate beneficence when a handful of plutocrats can provide the funds a party needs?
The Conservatives are most obviously dependent on the generosity of the super-rich. Iain Duncan Smith wasn't thrown out when he lost the confidence of the Parliamentary party - he never had it in the first place - or when the rank-and-file said enough was enough - they stuck with him to the end. What did for him was the revolt of the big-money donors. Stuart Wheeler, the spread-betting tycoon, who had given £5 million, announced that Duncan Smith 'doesn't look like a potential Prime Minister'. Other backers agreed, and the Leader of the Opposition was out.
UKIP isn't so different. Rich men can use the party to pursue their passions. For all the mites from widows, UKIP's advertising splurge is being part-funded by men who look the spit of Stuart Wheeler.
Alan Bown of Alan Bown (Margate) Ltd has given £104,000 since 2001. The chequebook of Bruce Robertson, a discount retailer whose family is worth about £85m, is providing the money for advertising campaigns.
Paul Sykes, the Eurosceptic businessman, and Sir Jack Hayward, of Wolverhampton Wanderers, have helped out in the past and may do so again. As the number of mainstream party activists prepared to raise funds falls ever lower, and turnout in elections matches the decline, the chance exists for a few rich men to organise angry minorities Berlusconi-style and win seats, if not power.
The presence of Dick Morris as an adviser to the UKIP campaign is telling. It shows the party has had no qualms about using the most cynical and effective propaganda tools. Somewhat peculiarly, Morris, an American, has taken it upon himself to help the British 'win your independence from France'.
There's no doubting his sincerity or his passion, but there's no doubting the ruthlessness of his tactics either. Morris saved Bill Clinton's presidency in the mid-1990s by persuading him to 'triangulate' - that is, to move to the Right and steal the Republicans' clothes. Clinton secured re-election with a series of crass messages.
We will save your children from pornography; we will save the middle classes' hard-earned money from being thrown at the greedy poor. There were no greater admirers of Clinton than Philip Gould, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair himself. In its early years, New Labour did little else than triangulate the living daylights out of the Tories.
Now Clintonite tactics are to be used against New Labour. Morris has told his friends that the message the public wants to hear is 'NO'. NO to Europe. NO to Brussels. NO to the single currency. NO to immigration. NO to the Westminster establishment.
Don't be too surprised in June if the media is surprised once again, and UKIP surfs a wave of negativity.