Despite the various opinion poll leads predicting a Brexit majority on 23 June I have always personally held the view that on the night sanity will prevail and the nation will vote to remain. But after several recent conversations with leading councillors, who after all are close to the action, the alarm bells are ringing. As if overtaken by mass hysteria voters appear to be ignoring all the well-researched warnings from economists such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies about the negative impact on the economy and therefore on public services from a Brexit and are deciding entirely on emotional grounds – ie about immigration and ‘independence.’

One pro-Remain Conservative leader of a unitary in a prosperous southern town dotted with the European headquarters of multinationals said virtually his entire Conservative group is pro-Brexit. Indeed, despite almost nil unemployment, prosperity and the presence of European HQs in his constituency he predicted his voters would also back Brexit. The ex-Tory leader of a prosperous London borough told me his group was overwhelmingly pro-Brexit and that he had even encountered Tory councillors handing out Ukip leaflets. Labour meanwhile was keeping its head down locally.

David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum, entirely for reasons to do with internal party politics, has spectacularly misfired. Just as the poll tax destroyed Mrs Thatcher and Iraq destroyed Tony Blair’s reputation so the EU referendum is Mr Cameron’s nemesis. Either way, Brexit or Remain, his party is fatally split. The majority of its members, including its councillors, are anti-EU while its leaders and MPs are not. But Mr Cameron’s wider legacy, should there be a Brexit vote, will be much more calamitous, an economic slump and years of uncertainty which will spook financial markets. The recession will include more spending cuts and tax rises to offset the drop in GDP, and at least two years of grinding political warfare as a pro-EU Commons reluctantly unravels decades of EU legislation and the Government negotiates with Brussels over trade. Nor of course will there be any change to immigration levels because a million expats, mostly elderly and therefore requiring NHS and social care, will return from their sunny retirement in southern Europe as freedom of movement is scrapped.

It is always possible that because being anti-EU is fashionable and xenophobia seems to have become acceptable voters, as well as councillors, are keeping their real views to themselves and will in the privacy of the ballot box opt for the safety of Remain. For the sake of future generations I hope this is the case.

• My book, The Politics of Public Sector Reform from Thatcher to the Coalition, is out now, published by Palgrave Macmillan