It's Nigel Farage's turn to "Laugh out Loud" when David Cameron tries to outsmart the eurosceptics.

Nigel Farage is having such a fantastic time. He only needs to look at David Cameron to have a good laugh. The British Prime Minister is trying everything to stop the rise of UKIP - Farage's right-wing populist "United Kingdom Independence Party". But every move to appease the eurosceptics backfires. Last Tuesday Cameron presented a draft for an EU referendum. "An act of pure desperation!", cried Farage triumphantly before he disappeared off on a Eurostar train to Brussels en route to the much hated headquarters of the European Union institutions. Farage stars there as member of the European Parliament.

British politics has lost its balance. In local elections UKIP won 23% of votes at the beginning of May. Next spring, UKIP could become the biggest party in the elections to the European Parliament. And in the British national elections in 2015, UKIP could weaken the Conservatives, enter the House of Commons and cost David Cameron his reelection.

No wonder the governing Conservative party is close to mutiny. About 100 back benchers in the House of Commons - about a third of all Tory MPs - want to leave the EU and call a referendum about a possible Brexit now. David Cameron himself does not like Europe much, but knows very well that Britain is politically and economically better off inside the EU. In January he announced an In-Out referendum by 2017 to pacify the eurosceptics - knowing that this promise has limited credibility. He does not even know if he will be reelected.

Panic? What panic? David Cameron, in Washington to sell a new EU-US-trade agreement, tried to calm his party and himself down. "We are the only party who gives the people the right to vote on EU membership," he said.

The Liberal Democrats are pro-European and so is the Labour Party - their MPs voted together with the moderate majority of the Tory party against amending the Queen's Speech of May 7th, which did not include a law on an EU referendum this coming year. But pressure is mounting on the LibDems and on Labour. So far they have resisted accepting an EU referendum before the next national elections. But given the popularity ratings of UKIP - at 18 %, a historical peak - Labour leader Ed Miliband might consider changing his policies. Not to speak of Nick Clegg, who seems to have lost all credibility in the past three years of coalition government.

But the real victim of Nigel Farage so far has been David Cameron. As if they sense the collapsing credibility of their party leader, two of his ministers have declared they would vote for a Brexit immediately if a EU referendum were held today. One of those is Michael Gove, the education minister, who is considered the most likely successor to David Cameron as leader of the Conservative party.

Cameron therefore is in a bind. He wants to renegotiate British powers in the EU, bring some competences back from Brussels and then stay in a reformed EU without joining an even more integrated political or banking union. Not even his Europe Minister David Livington, however, can say at this point which powers Cameron wants to bring back to Britain. A delegation of British business people recently came to Brussels to inquire at the EU commission what Britain could possibly renegotiate. Nobody knew. Addionally it is utterly unclear in every other European capital if and how the Lisbon Treaty should be renegotiated.

For most Brits, all this is much too complicated. With the ongoing euro crisis and a daunting economic situation in Britain itself, Britains traditional euroscepticism has evolved into blind EU hatred. This feeds UKIP's rise, because Farage reduces it to a simple matter: EU=evil=out. "This is why we are now at 18 % in the opinion polls", says Gawain Towler, Nigel Farage's spokesman: "Although we only won 147 out of 2,300 council seats at the last election, our influence on this government is far bigger."

But who are UKIP? Mainly an anti-establishment party. Anti-European resentment is only the most obvious part of the story. Europe is the easiest scapegoat for the island. On the traditionally immigration-friendly island it is still easier to hate the European continent than immigrants. To properly express his anti-European course, Farage even took over the "Europe of Freedom and Democracy" group in the European Parliament (EP), which he co-chairs with the Northern Italian separatists of the "Lega Nord". UKIP currently has 11 seats in the EP, out of a total of 73 British mandates.

Not every eurosceptic is allowed into the EFD. The two MEPs from Austria's "Freedom Party" (FPÖ) would like to join, but Farage blocks their entry. "Do not compare us to them, we want nothing to do with them, we are not racists", says Farage spokesman Towler. The FPÖ in his opinion has more in common with the "Front National" of Marine Le Pen in France.

Not everyone seems to see a big difference between Europe's xenophobic parties. In Scotland on Thursday, Farage had to be escorted by police from a pub for his own protection while students shouted: "Immigrants are welcome here, but not UKIP!" Farage, who likes to drink beer with his fans in pubs across the country and was trying to rally support for UKIP in Scotland, where so far the EU-phobic party has no seats, seemed shocked. "We are not for a total halt to immigration", says Towler. "We are just against massive immigration at a time when our own people are unemployed." This argument usually goes down well with the impoverished population of the island's North. Unemployment in Great Britain currently stands at 7.9 %.

Although UKIP is doing so well in the opinion polls, Farage will have to work on the base of his party if he does not want to risk it imploding before UKIP reaches parliament. Drinking beer in pubs will not be enough.

Among those who he hastily recruited to run in all those elections are quite a few open racists. Eric Kitson celebrated only ten days in his council seat before Farage had to ask him to resign. Kitson had posted a cartoon on his Facebook page, which showed a Muslim being grilled on a spit above a fire fuelled by copies of the Koran.