All But

"The Daily Mail all but backs Out," as any and everyone is saying today.

Quite. All but. Even today, it has not quite said the words.

And it will back a Conservative Prime Minister in the end, because it will back a Conservative Prime Minister in the end. Like all the rest of them.

Apart from the Express, and Peter Hitchens resigned from that as long as 16 years ago; he can now barely bring itself to utter its name, because of what it has become.

It is the only newspaper, as such, ever to have advised its readers to vote UKIP. But who buys it for the politics?

Speaking of Hitchens, as an obvious outrider, the Mail on Sunday is backing In from the start.

If you wanted an anti-EU columnist, then you could buy any paper, including Giles Fraser's Guardian. He is on the Editorial Board, no less.

Owen Jones has also yet to declare his hand definitively, and may still be persuadable to vote as Tony Benn would have voted.

But if you wanted an anti-EU paper, then you could buy only the Morning Star. There is no "all but" in that.