According to yesterday’s Mail on Sunday the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, presumably taking a breather from his attempts to reform Britain’s declining schools, has declared that we need to take a tougher stance on Europe and to tell Brussels that if we had a referendum on continued membership he would vote to leave. There were no actual quotations from Mr Gove personally and most of the viewpoints attributed to him came from interviews with “friends” and “a well placed source” who gave testimony as to what Mr Gove told them. In effect this was either a non-story placed on the front page to sell copy or alternatively it was an authorised leak to convince us that the Government are, at last, going to get tough on Europe.

If it was an attempt to sell newspapers then fair enough, the fall in newspaper sales caused by universally obtainable online news would justify almost any attempt to boost sales, even stories based on hearsay. However, if it was a deliberate leak to try and convince a sceptical and disenchanted public that the Government is actually going to stand up to Brussels then that is a different matter. There is no doubt that the Conservatives, who in power seem no better or, at times, no different to New Labour, are losing support at an alarming rate.

Perhaps the Prime Minister’s colleagues and advisers are finally beginning to realise that they need to do something about it and they now realise that continued membership of the European Union is of concern to a sizeable proportion of the electorate. Let’s hope that this is the case because the continued defection of traditional Conservatives to UKIP is going to do neither party, nor the country as a whole, any favours since neither one will be strong enough to form a government come the elections in 2015.