Strange days indeed. The sky is low, the house is full of tiny spiders, my road is full of righteous remain posters, the polls are jumpy. A relative emails: “Have you taken to screaming out of the window at immigrants yet?”

It’s a joke. It’s not that funny. What will persuade me to vote remain? Being called a racist scumbag? The bourgeoisie is hugging itself close, convinced of its own case, repeating over and over the mantra that, overall, net immigration is beneficial, and anyone who doesn’t know that probably has tattoos of Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech all over them.

The light relief of Nigel Farage and Bob Geldof’s spat on the Thames is welcome. It doesn’t lower the tone of the debate, it mirrors it. This macho discussion has been tinged with hysteria and is now culminating in the announcement of the “blackmail budget”, which simply reinforces the sentiment that no one really knows what they are doing and that George Osborne just makes it up as he goes along.

The disconnect between the plethora of politicians and experts and financiers of the Remain or Die lobby and the voters who on the doorstep say politely, “Nah, mate, I want out,” is absolute. This disconnect has so often been read as the impetus for a social movement that would be innately alternative and broadly left. This spirit, channelled via the cosmos by the likes of Russell Brand, now seems as distant a memory to me as the Stop the City demonstration I went on in 1984 – “a carnival against war, oppression and exploitation” aimed at stopping bankers and stockbrokers getting to work. We were kettled – we just did not have that word then. But these were the roots of what would become the Occupy movement. The dreadlocked anarchos with their resigned-looking dogs became a familiar sight. Bandanas against teargas. This is where it was presumed anti-globalisation protest was located. The left could interact with this element. It recognised it. Now? It is tone deaf and increasingly myopic.

It can’t see that a steel plant closing, or the boarded-up shops of the east coast, or the eastern Europeans in the Fen towns picking peas in return for a box of chicken and chips have resulted in another type of anti-globalisation protest, which is, of course, Brexit. Wages are down, escape routes blocked, and yet the London political class venture to these half-empty shopping centres to bring glad tidings of the contribution of immigrants. They will care for us when we are old, and, anyway, there is a new Eritrean restaurant you should try. Loft conversion, you say? Here is the number of my Polish/Brazilian builders.

That immigration issue that we never talk about? We talk about it all the time – just in different tongues. What we don’t do is listen. If we did, then the crumbling of the Labour remain vote would not be surprising. What did we see happening at the last election? What do we think happened in Scotland? The complacency of thinking that you can take working-class votes for granted is absolute condescension. And still it is being played out. They know not what they do, these lower orders, these vessels of false consciousness who respond only to bribes.

Thus an offer may be made, it is said, in order to keep us in Europe. Labour’s “people” are the fragile coalition between the liberal middle class and the disillusioned working class. Both Tom Watson and Ed Balls have said Labour needs to renegotiate free movement. Balls has talked about borders and controls on economic migration. Such an offer may well be too late and clearly runs counter to Jeremy Corbyn’s ideals. But for the left to stay in business after this referendum there has to be a manufacture of consent around immigration. We have a moral duty to deal with the refugee crisis and another to recalibrate spending to help areas that are absorbing migrants, where wages are down and services stretched, instead of vaguely insisting that it is all good.

The Tory party may be split asunder by this vote, but there will be a further hollowing out of Labour if it cannot shore up the remain vote. And I think it is pretty unrecoverable.

The current panic reveals a clique of embedded London journalists. The debate, such as it is, has been entirely antagonistic, veering between scaremongering and sanctimony. Often I wonder who is being addressed. A lot of us are not. To construct a populist language around a multicultural society that speaks to current lived experience, we need to be local and specific. This is where there is such a huge gap. When people say: “Why is my pay so low? Why can’t I get a doctor’s appointment? Why is there no school place?”, the answers cannot merely be abstract nouns such as “austerity” or “globalisation”. We may as well blame the weather.

The result is thinking something can be done by voting for change (leave), even if it is a baseless fantasy. The idea of control, for those who feel little, also works at an emotional level. The refusal to do what economists, experts and politicians say means seeing that the emperor has no clothes. Except those made in a sweat shop. I remain divided.