But then that is Survation for you. This is the very same polling organisation that, two weeks before the general election, gave Nigel Farage a six-percent lead over Tory rival Craig Mackinlay. The position was exactly reversed on the day.

As to the referendum, we see a researcher from the British Election Study remark that his organisation's face-to-face survey delivered a rather different result. His poll had 61 percent wanting to remain, while only 39 percent expressed "leave" as a preference. This is in the context of a more detailed study on the failed predictions of the pollsters in the general election – to which Survation more than adequately contributed.

The "take home" point from this is that, even at face value, polls must be taken with a pinch or salt - and that is without the special factors of this (and any) referendum, where the question asked is not necessarily going to be the question answered by the electorate. Thus, even if the Survation poll was accurate – which is unlikely – it is irrelevant.

The use of polling, and the reverence with which results are treated, however, seem to remain unaffected by the disastrous results of the general election and, for amateurs such as Arron Banks, they retain their almost magical properties.

Viewed as an instrument, though, polls are simply one form of political intelligence – and only one. But conventional wisdom now has it that opinion polls – and their handmaiden, the focus group – are the principle tools of campaigning. This has tended to push other forms of intelligence into the background. Then, since intelligence in itself is nothing without skilled analysis, the resultant analyses tend to be one-dimensional. 

The danger of this is that strategists end up hobbled. Failure to acquire and use intelligence on the enemy's intentions means that actions are reactive rather than predictive. And, as we have pointed out earlier - with particular reference to the master strategist, Sun Tzu – a successful general will craft his plan in relation to the enemy he is facing. 

The point here is that, if conditions change, the strategist must change the plan to meet the new realities on the ground. The the earlier information gets to the strategists, the better equipped they are to craft appropriate and effective responses. 

As it so happens, we have been fortunate in that our enemy – David Cameron – seems to have declared his hand early. We are less fortunate in that the two "noisemaker" campaigns seem totally indifferent to this intelligence. They are planning and executing campaigns seemingly without any reference to his strategy.

But what David Cameron is doing is adopting the technique exploited in the Clinton era by Dick Morris, known as triangulation. This has been described latterly as "the idea that you demonstrate to some set of swing voters that you are politically palatable by poking the extremes of both parties in the eye".

This technique was successfully used by Blair, with his famous "middle way". In the hands of Cameron, it could prove to be a potent weapon. And this knowledge should be having a dramatic effect on the way the campaign is being run.

Specifically, if the Cameron strategy is to paint the eurosceptics and Europhiles as the extremes of the argument, creating space for him to occupy the "moderate middle", the more sound and fury produced by the two sides, the better it is for the Prime Minister. By that measure, the more apparently successful the "leavers" become – especially if they consider media coverage the hallmark of success – the worse off we will actually be. 

 It is imperative, therefore, that we should not be engaging in battles with the europhiles – or even attacking the EU. Mr Cameron will be (and is) presenting himself as the pragmatic fixer. Instead of dealing with the minutia, he will present himself as rising above the fray with plans to reform the terms of Britain's membership of the EU. This in turn offers the possibility of greater reforms arising from our new status - far greater than he could get from a short-term focus on points of detail (or so Mr Cameron will tell us).

Whether that appeals to committed "leavers" is quite irrelevant. They can fulminate all they like. They are not Mr Cameron's target. He is after the "moderate middle", the ones who will decide the referendum.

From this, the obvious and necessary response is to degrade the "middle way", pointing out that Mr Cameron's "British model" still keeps us locked in to a supranational government, with all that that entails. The only true "middle way" is to leave the EU, so that we can then negotiate a genuinely new relationship – one based on cooperation rather than subordination.

Nevertheless, this is not the whole extent of it. If we look more deeply at Mr Cameron's strategy, we see that he is on the threshold of changing the terms of the debate. If he gets his way, the question that voters will be answering is not "should we remain in the EU or leave?", but: "do you trust me, the Prime Minister, to fix our relationship with the EU?". 

In these circumstances, the constant litany of woes presented by "leavers" about the parlous state of the EU, and the real or supposed injuries, is simply playing into Mr Cameron's hands. He will accept the criticisms and agree with them – and then take credit for coming up with an apparently workable solution. Only if the "moderate middle" judge his solution to lack credibility will they then be prepared to look at alternatives.

And here again the Sun Tzu counsel much prevail. We must modify our approach in accordance with our enemy's situation. We attack the "middle way" and then, when we see its popularity wane, we can commit our reserves to a counter-attack, hitting hard with our vision of an alternative, alongside a credible mechanism for achieving it.

That actually brings us back to where we came in. In this endeavour, opinion polls would be of some use – as indeed would focus groups. But they should be the servants of strategy, not the drivers of it.

In this referendum what should come first is an intelligence-driven appraisal of the enemy intentions. Then we devise our response and implement it. The polls are simply tools (and limited ones at that) for measuring the effects of our own strategy, allowing us to fine-tune our activities.

Without this, the risk is that the campaigning on the ground may not just be ineffective. It may actually be counter-productive. And that, currently, seems to be the situation on the ground. How we address that is something for a following piece.