Are we looking in the wrong direction for the blow which may undo the European project? David Cameron’s ‘referendum’ is obviously designed never to be held. As I keep pointing out, he wouldn’t promise it if he genuinely thought he might have to deliver it. He espouses it to remain the largest single party, not to attain the absolute majority which would compel him actually to hold the promised plebiscite.

Greece and Spain may be contained. The PEGIDA movement in Germany looks enfeebled already, much as its most obvious parallel, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation movement in Australia, eventually ran out of momentum because its leaders were too inarticulate and short of ideas, and couldn’t bear the weight of the revolution they almost created.

If you’re going to challenge globalist multiculturalism, which means not just attacking the thing itself but confronting the fake political parties which pretend to oppose it and don’t, you’re going to need a pretty strong understanding of the foe, or perhaps a huge measure of luck and cunning. Nigel Farage, so far, has thrived on luck and cunning, rather than understanding, but in the hurricane-like storm of lies which is a modern British general election, I wonder if that will serve. Huge piles of £20 notes are being fed into the Tory wind machine at the moment, and the low, sinister whine you already hear will increase to a screaming, howling roaring climax of mendacity by May.

But the political crisis in France looks to me to be very deep indeed. UKIP’s challenge , by comparison with that of the disreputable French National Front, is tiny.

You’d be hard put to glean it from the British media, but the French National Front (FN) has just wiped out the ‘centre-right’ party of Nicolas Sarkozy in the first round of a by-election for the 4th District of Doubs in Franche-Comte. An unnamed French Tory has been quoted as saying that the FN is now ;on the doorstep of power’ This seat was previously held by a Socialist Deputy, Pierre Moscovici, recently appointed as France’s European Commissioner. . It was marginal in 2002 and 2007, and last held by the French Tories in 2002). The Socialists (party of the beleaguered President Francois Hollande) came second. There will now be a run-off.

Maybe it was the bad weather. Maybe it was revenge on Mr Moscovici for the policies he was closely associated with, which have led to high taxes and high unemployment. Maybe it wasn’t. It was a 60% poll . The FN Candidate, Sophie Montel scored 32.6% of the votes cast (8,382) , with the Socialist candidate, Frederic Barbier, polling 7,416 (28.85%). Charles Demouge, the Tory equivalent (UMP – it stands, hilariously for Union for a Popular Movement’, a party name so wholly empty of meaning that I’m surprised David Cameron hasn’t copied it) trailed in third at 6,824 (26.54%). Nobody else even got 1,000 votes, so it’s the homeless Tory votes that will decide the matter when the second round takes place next Sunday. Will they bolster M.Hollande, whom they despise? Or toy with Marine le Pen’s FN to upset M.Hollande? Or abstain? Or a mixture of all three, making the result hard to predict?

In the 2012 general election, Moscovici got 49.32% (19,311) , Demouge 26.2% (10,260) and Montel 24.5% (9,581) . In an unpopularity contest, the FN have held on their vote rather better than the others. Both the traditional French parties are in a bad way. Mr Sarkozy doesn’t seem to have regained the appeal he had hoped for , after the general failure of the Hollande presidency.

Readers will recall that Marine Le Pen was , one way or the other, excluded from the great national rally in Paris after the recent terror murders there. This policy, of treating her as a pariah, doesn’t seem to be harming her or her party very much. John Lichfield in the Independent says in his account : ‘The party's leader, Marine Le Pen, campaigned on an “Islamist threat” to French identity. She has, however, faced extremist challenges in recent weeks to her relatively moderate line from senior party diehards including her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.’

Hmph. Or perhaps Umph. I should have thought that it did her nothing but good to be attacked by her ghastly father, as her growth in popularity has, I think, been based on the idea that she is not him, and the heaviest burden she bears in politics is that she is his daughter. In any case, , France’s next presidential election could be the biggest challenge to the EU monolith so far. Keep a watch on it.