For all his supposed authenticity and principles, Corbyn has turned out to be like any other politician in bowing to the combined pressure of his pro-European parliamentary party and his support base, Momentum. Pushed into reluctantly supporting the Remain campaign, Corbyn’s tactic has been to avoid speaking about the issue. On the occasions he does, he is about as convincing as Donald Trump speaking about Christianity.For him to remain on the sidelines in Britain’s first referendum on EU membership in over 40 years is a total abdication of responsibility. Labour MPs on both sides rightly despair when they see Corbyn speaking at a CND rally rather than campaigning on the referendum. But then the EU is not a cause on which Corbyn is prepared to risk his political life, while CND is something he has been campaigning for since he was 16. With 38 per cent of Labour voters likely to vote to leave and many undecided, the referendum is the one political outcome in this parliament that Corbyn could possibly influence (whereas the renewal of Trident is not). Politicians choose their fights carefully; perhaps it is the romantic in Corbyn which makes him favour battles he is certain to lose.

It is a truism that the British working class, in many respects, has not done very well out of globalisation or the protective belt that the EU is supposed to provide; their jobs have either been transported elsewhere or their wages suppressed by immigration. As RMT leader and virulent Eurosceptic the late Bob Crow once put it, “Social EU legislation has not saved one job.” Last month the former M&S boss and head of the Remain campaign Sir Stuart Rose admitted that rising immigration suppressed wages (he added that this was not necessarily a bad thing). Some believe the referendum will hinge on immigration, but that is a misnomer for what must also be recognised as a wider debate about cheap labour. If the unions have been silent on immigration, this is more a reflection of their weakness than their cultural openness. If the Labour party has been ineffective in addressing concerns about immigration it is because it has tended to approach it as an issue of race relations rather than what it actually was: industrial relations.

The EU reveals, more than any other issue, what Orwell recognised as the central tension between the left-wing establishment and what were in his day the cloth-cap constituencies on which Labour relied (and is supposedly still there to represent). Left-wing Euroscepticism (or at least a genuine reassessment of its stagnant position on Europe) is one way that the party might regain some relevance among its core constituency and claw back some of the votes it lost to UKIP at the last election. Either way, it would be foolhardy as well as irresponsible for the Left to allow the referendum campaign to be dominated by Etonian egos and Little Englanders whistling “Rule Britannia”.