Conservative party Eurosceptics and the UK Independence party are using dubious polling data supplied by militant Irish nationalists associated with a convicted IRA gunrunner in their campaign to kill off the EU's reform blueprint, the Lisbon treaty.
A week before the Irish vote in a referendum that will make or break Europe's attempt to streamline the way it is governed, the Europhobic blogosphere is buzzing with the results of an obscure "opinion poll", purporting to show a 3-2 majority against the treaty – the direct opposite of several professional surveys conducted in Ireland in recent weeks.
The result was initially supplied to bloggers by Ukip whose leader, Nigel Farage, has been campaigning for a no vote in Ireland.