Daily catch-up: Is this referendum like 1975, or will anti-politics win this time?

Plus a straight-talking, honest-politics U-turn, and the spread of don't, I'm and you're

Cartoon by Jake Goretzki. David Cameron's comment about Twitter was one of his more perceptive: social media have been a disaster for the Labour Party because they allow a tiny and untypical proportion of the population to think that they are a "movement".

• Vernon Bogdanor, Cameron's Oxford tutor, gave a lecture last year on the 1975 Europe referendum, and said this about the opinion polls then:

"Shortly before the re-negotiation had been completed, a Gallup poll in January 1975 showed 55% wanting to leave and 45% wanting to stay. But then Gallup asked the following question: “If the Government negotiated new terms for Britain’s membership of the Common Market, and they thought it was in Britain’s interests to remain a member, how would you vote then, to stay in or leave?” The answer then was 71% to stay in and 29% to leave. That almost pre-figured the actual result of the referendum. So, it is clear that people could be greatly influenced by what the political leaders, in particular the leaders of the Labour Party, said about it. This, I think, begins to answer the key question of why the polls swung back from their hostility to Europe to a positive vote, and why public opinion swung back."

Just as in 1975, most politicians, business leaders and newspapers are now in favour of staying in the EU. (Although that was also true in Norway, which voted to stay out in 1972.) The question this time is whether the anti-politics, anti-establishment mood is such that we produce a different result from 1975 this time. (Norway produced the same result, the opposite of ours, in 1994.)

• Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times is good on the benefits of being perfidious Albion: getting the best of being half in and half out of the EU:

"Fudge works. Fudge is the British way. Fudge is how Britain ended up with the best but not the worst of the European project. And fudge is what will emerge at the end of Mr Cameron’s great democratic exercise, whenever it comes and whatever the official result. The referendum is not a fork in the road. It is a roundabout with no exits."

And Rafael Behr ‏had a clever way of describing the Great Hesitating Boris:

"Official status of Tory leadership hopefuls who anticipate 'in' vote but want kudos in party as sceptics: 'indefinite leave to remain'."

• I'm not always this good at anticipating the next move in politics, but yesterday I posted this on Twitter at 2.58pm: "Neon sign: 'Tory trap.' Will Labour have a policy on the 'Charter for Budget Responsibility' in time for Weds pm?" Little more than an hour later, Labour MPs received an email from John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, telling them he had reversed his position and would be asking them to vote against the Charter tomorrow. I had asked the question because McDonnell had said he would support the Charter, which seeks to balance the Government budget, while also saying he wanted to borrow for capital investment. He has now resolved that contradiction in favour of borrowing, which led to a "shambles" of a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party last night, according to one Labour MP, Ben Bradshaw.

Despite earlier shambles, the Corbyn surge in an opinion poll has finally arrived. ICM/Guardian: Con 38% (no change since last month), Lab 34% (+2) , Lib Dem 7% (-1), UKIP 11% (-2), Green 3% (nc).

• Tom Freeman has carried out some research into the use of contractions. They have become more common in writing over the past 25 years, with "don't" easily the most common, followed by "I'm" and "you're".

• It took me an embarrassingly long time to get this, from Moose Allain:

“My loft is full of fallen leaves,” he said automatically.