Yet we are stuck with this Tory Government, in or out of the EU. This collection of sophisticated predators, who systematically promote the interests of their own kind and seek the further enrichment of the moneyed classes despite the deep inequalities in Britain, know how to survive.

Where was Iain Duncan Smith’s consciousness of his Government’s preferring tax cuts for the wealthy when poor and disabled people, hit by his benefit cuts, were struggling to survive? Those were the days when David Cameron’s response to Nick Clegg’s attempts to adjust the balance of taxation in favour of the poor was ‘But our donors wouldn’t like it’, and the reply to requests for more public housing was ‘It would only create more Labour voters’. Yet, only this year did Duncan Smith apparently find his conscience and notice that the parrot-cry of ‘We are all in this together’ was false.

We do not have a Government that can be trusted with the welfare of all its people. So it isn’t  strange to see that many, vaguely aware of the falsity of care and uneasy at the obvious Government divisions, project their unconscious fears on to the Other – immigrants: be they East Europeans doing useful jobs here and paying taxes, or hapless refugees. But our job is to keep demanding that government looks out for everyone, and insisting that fellow Europeans coming here is usually of benefit to us, and refugees have a right to come.

If the Remain campaign succeeds in fighting the folly of the Outers and winning, Liberal Democrats will of course gain no credit despite our whole-hearted efforts. The Government will claim victory, and thank their wealthy friends. Even if Cameron fell, who would succeed him? Failed Osborne, hard-hearted May or self-serving Boris? Is this the leadership we can look forward to in 2020, given the disastrous divisions in Labour?

Liberal Democrats must expect far more battles with this Government, which is no longer restrained by us and will not be much longer restrained by the divisive Referendum campaign. The prospect of further welfare cuts in pursuit of Osborne’s deficit-denouncing dream still savagely threatens poor working families and must be fiercely resisted. We have a Government prepared blatantly to protect and further the interests of the few at the expense of the mass of the people. Insidiously, they are subverting democracy.

It is oligarchy which is being quietly spread throughout Britain. Heads of schools must have more power than elected LEAs, ultimately subject to the Education Secretary. Mayors must have more power than elected local authorities. Police and Crime Commissioners must have more power than police authorities. Local services will continue to be diminished, because they are out of control of the ruling classes that this Government represents. As Democrats, as Tim shows the way, we have to communicate to all our people that we will fight as passionately as the Corbynistas, but more effectively, against these existential threats.

* Katharine Pindar is a long-standing member of the Lib Dems and an activist in the West Cumbrian constituency of Copeland and Workington.