STILL reeling from last week's by-election disaster, the Tories are now hit by the declaration that billionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party, which is against the EU, will field 600 candidates at the general election with a campaign budget of at least £20million.

But need they be so scared of traditional Tory voters, who are also Euro-sceptic, deserting to Sir James's party?

We do not think so.

To begin with, the record of rich men buying political power in modern democracies is far from successful. We just need to look across the Atlantic at how moguls Ross Perot and Malcolm Forbes have spent millions of dollars to ultimately achieve very little.

Voters here might also be wary of piling aboard any bandwagon that looks like an ego trip.

In any case, either of the major parties could easily take the wind out of Sir James's sails - by delivering just the sort of commitment to a referendum on EU membership for which he is calling.

Yes, that would be a sort of victory for him.

But it would be a mighty expensive method of getting his way, especially if his Referendum Party was blown out of the water in the process.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.