It maybe grudging, reluctant and rather embittered but UKIP have apologised for repeatedly using the Jean Monnet quote that I pointed out to them (see blog entry 31 January) was completely fabricated (to the effect that Monnet advocated developing the EU in secret, keeping the public in the dark).

In a letter to the Western Morning News, UKIP’s Graham Booth, a regular user of the quote, apologised for his “mistake” and accepted to remove references to it in UKIP material. We’ll see if they do – Nigel Farage, their leader, has not even acknowledged a similar request.

Anyway, it’s good to get an admission from UKIP that they were telling lies. Not that the apology was anything but grudging. Booth goes on to claim that the fabricated quote effectively represents Monnet’s real views – despite the fact that I furnished him with a quote in which Monnet says precisely the opposite.

As his evidence Booth quotes a passage in a book by one Adrian Hilton, “The Principality of Power". But what is this supposed to prove? This is a single author’s opinion of what he thought Monnet believed, not what Monnet ever said.

I’m still slightly bewildered by Booth’s letter (which you can read in full here) but it is certainly an intriguing insight into the warped logic of UKIP (to the effect of "If he didn’t say it, he probably meant it anyway even if all his deeds and sayings show the opposite")

Anyone who has followed my recent investigation into that Jean Monnet quote might be interested to read Jan Marinus Wiersma's blog on cabbages, which turns out to be another example of how the internet has helped propagate and amplify myths.

Cabbages have always been held responsible for creating some unpleasant hot air and as Jan Marinus reveals it is no different on this occasion.

His blog looks into the alleged 26,000-odd words the EU uses in its legislation on cabbages and how this compares to the number of words in, for instance, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer or Pythagoras’s Theorem. With a little research he discovers it is in fact an old yarn, originally cooked up in the United States in 1943, about a trade agreement the country originally had with the Netherlands, but with the help of the internet it has sprang back to life as a fanciful story about European regulation.

Lies about cabbages are certainly not as damaging as the Jean Monnet quote but they, along with the plethora of other white lies about Europe, contribute to the atmosphere of ridicule the right-leaning press is so accomplished at foistering.

Eurosceptics have long followed the policy of Goebbels who said that if you tell a lie often enough people will believe it. One particularly insidious lie that they have been repeating since the 1970s is a fabricated quote from Jean Monnet to the effect that:

"Europe's nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose but which will irreversibly lead to federation."

Anyone with a passing acquaintance of Monnet's work would immediately be suspicious of such a quote. I have asked the Jean Monnet foundation in Switzerland whether there is any record of Jean Monnet saying anything of the sort, and they confirm that he didn't - this was an invention first made up in a British newspaper in the 1970s.

On the other hand, they have sent me a real speech by Jean Monnet, delivered on the 28th March 1953 to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, in which he said precisely the opposite -

"Our Community will only develop well if all the measures that it takes are made public, explained publicly not only to the peoples of our Community but also to those who do not belong to it"

[The French original - "Notre Communauté ne se développera bien que si toutes les mesures qu'elle prend sont rendues publiques, expliquées publiquement, non suelement aux peuples de notre Communauté, mais aux peoples qui n'en font pas partie."]