Now the evidence for this may have escaped you. But if a majority of voters decide on Thursday that the UK should leave the EU (and you think that is a bad idea), you know who and what to blame. No, not the persuasive powers of Johnson, Farage and Gove, nor the posters and front pages claiming a migrant invasion of our sceptr’d isle, but that well-known master-strategist, striver after world domination and latter-day tsar, Vladimir Putin.

Yes, it will be all the Russian president’s fault, with a little help from Isis. These are the bogeymen that leading Remain campaigners – first among them the foreign secretary Philip Hammond – have invoked as cheerleaders for Brexit. With friends like these, they argue, the Leave campaign is fatally tainted. How could any right-minded person even consider voting Leave, when you know that it is what Putin and his Kremlin pals so crave.

That neither Putin nor any member of his immediate circle has ever even hinted at a stance on the UK referendum, let alone any sympathy for Brexit, is neither here nor there. Just as surely as the Russian leader “probably” ordered the radiation murder of the former agent, Alexander Litvinenko, just as surely as he plotted to help Ukrainian rebels down a Malaysian civilian airliner two years ago, so he has been rubbing his hands for months in anticipation of Brexit.

The detail that Ukip’s leader, Nigel Farage, in the past voiced (some qualified) admiration for Putin is proof enough of guilt in “joint enterprise”. The same applies to the boast of “that clown” Donald Trump that he could do business with Putin. Now go away, so the argument runs, and vote to stay in the EU.

The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit Show all 7 1 /7 The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 22 May 2015 In his regular column in The Express Nigel Farage utilised the concerns over Putin and the EU to deliver a tongue in cheek conclusion. “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 13 November 2015 UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire Mike Hookem, was one of several political figures who took no time to harness the toxic atmosphere just moments after Paris attacks to push an agenda. “Cameron says we’re safer in the EU. Well I’m in the centre of the EU and it doesn’t feel very safe.” Getty Images The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 19 April 2016 In an article written for The Guardian, Michael Gove attempts to bolster his argument with a highly charged metaphor in which he likens UK remaining in the EU to a hostage situation. “We’re voting to be hostages locked in the back of the car and driven headlong towards deeper EU integration.” Rex The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 26 April 2016 In a move that is hard to decipher, let alone understand, Mike Hookem stuck it to Obama re-tweeting a UKIP advertisement that utilises a quote from the film: ‘Love Actually’ to dishonour the US stance on the EU. “A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend” The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 10 May 2016 During a speech in London former work and pensions secretary Ian Duncan Smith said that EU migration would cause an increasing divide between people who benefit from immigration and people who couldn’t not find work because of uncontrolled migration. “The European Union is a ‘force for social injustice’ which backs the ‘haves rather than the have-nots.” EPA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 15 May 2016 Cartoon character Boris Johnson made the news again over controversial comments that the EU had the same goal as Hitler in trying to create a political super state. “Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically.” “The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.” PA The most scaremongering arguments for Brexit 16 May 2016 During a tour of the women’s clothing manufacturer David Nieper, Boris had ample time to cook up a new metaphor, arguably eclipsing Gove’s in which he compares the EU to ‘badly designed undergarments.’ “So I just say to all those who prophecy doom and gloom for the British Business, I say their pants are on fire. Let’s say knickers to the pessimists, knickers to all those who talk Britain down.” Getty Images

Why the Remain campaign concluded that Putin obviously favoured Brexit is a mystery to me. If, as I suspect, it derives chiefly from Russia-EU rivalry over Ukraine and the assumption that Putin will support anything that might weaken the EU, then it simply exposes the depth of misunderstanding that bedevils the UK’s relations with Russia in general and the misreadings that are endemic in the Foreign Office in particular.

Wanting to clip the wings of the EU – a powerful grouping, in official Russian judgements – even to inspire a little angst in the “new” EU and Nato states, is one thing. Supporting, even tacitly, a departure that could encourage other exits and precipitate the break-up of the whole European Union project is something else. Russia’s priority under Putin, as under Boris Yeltsin before him, is its own security and stability on its borders. This is why it (over-) reacted as it did to unrest in Ukraine. This is why Russia would certainly not want the UK to leave the EU.

Such a fundamental misunderstanding, however, is part and parcel of the mystique the UK more than almost anyone has spun around Putin. And with his poker-face and ascetic manner, he is so easy to blame. After all, he authorised the restoration of the old Soviet-era national anthem, didn’t he, in the hope that it would remind friends and enemies alike of Russia’s Soviet-era power. Grassroots pressure? Lobbying from sports organisations and others? Come off it, everyone knows that Putin is omnipotent; one flick of his finger and the deed is done.

Doping in Russian athletics is not just doping, but “state-sponsored doping”, and, as such, something Putin had to be complicit in. At Euro 2016, Russia’s football thugs were not just thugs, but “highly trained” and in “uniform”. What is more, “Whitehall sources” hinted that they had to be under Kremlin control, another tool in the dastardly armoury of “hybrid warfare”. This is as absurd as suggesting that England’s thugs were masterminded from Downing Street. Not even Putin has suggested that.

Clarkson and Cameron on Brexit

For years, the West has exaggerated Putin’s power and authority, by imposing a tsar analogy that does not fit and wrongly characterising Russia’s dysfunctional state as a dictatorship. But in puffing him up as such a threat, we serve his ends more than we serve ours.

There is a coda to the Remainers’ miscasting of Putin as Brexiteer-in-chief. Last weekend, after an international economics conference in St Petersburg, which was attended – boycotts notwithstanding – by the president of the European Commission, the Italian prime minister and others – Putin was asked directly about Brexit. Confirming that he and his ministers had said nothing because – as he rightly remarked, it was none of their business – he made two points. First, he denied that Brexit would be in Russia’s interests. Second, he questioned why on earth David Cameron had called a referendum that was so clearly against his own interests, speculating that it was perhaps a conspiracy to blackmail the EU.

Putin’s answer suggests genuine bafflement in Moscow about why the UK’s referendum was called and his explanation serves to illustrate just how much misunderstanding there is on both sides. What should now be clear, however, is that Putin, contrary to so many assumptions, is not backing Brexit. And when the foreign secretary mentioned foreign enemies of Remain at the weekend, it was striking that he named only Isis. Putin had strangely dropped off his list.