The problem with any referendum is that both camps focus on the immediate outcome, with supporters thinking in black and white – or in this case ‘stay’ or ‘leave’.

It is hard to believe that by the time the next Business Observer is out that the momentous decision will have been taken but it is even harder to anticipate the fall-out.

Clearly, the arguments for ‘stay’ have been much easier to make. There has been a systematic campaign with started with companies making open threats about their future presence in the UK, gradually moving to economic heavyweights analysing the economic cost in terms of GDP and investment, and finally getting down to the eleventh hour campaign based on putting fear in people’s pockets: their spending power on holiday; the cost of their shopping trolley.

The arguments for ‘leave’ have been harder because they are based on what the UK wants to change without any precedent which would guarantee that it is possible to achieve. And they have struggled to get voters to understand the doom scenarios being painted by the ‘stay’ supporters. The campaign seems to have picked up momentum once Boris Johnson, possibly cynically weighing up his chances of becoming the next Prime Minister, decided to weigh in on the ‘leave’ side. (And to add to all this, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is also asking his supporters to vote ‘stay’.)

The problem for the ‘leave’ campaign has been to explain that the impact of Brexit would have to be calculated in two phases: the immediate – admittedly tough – fall-out for two years as the EU and the UK struggle to disentangle themselves and for the UK to recreate an independent presence; and the long-term phase once the dust has settled.

What is all too easily overlooked is that the very fact of the referendum has already had an impact, slowing down investments, job creation and even house sales. And that is not something that has affected the UK in isolation: it has had a ripple effect on all its trading partners, its foreign investors, its expatriate community and central banks across the globe.

And perhaps even more insidiously, it has had an effect on the citizens of other EU member states, disenchanted by recession and jittery about the forces slithering beneath their feet, from migration to terrorism.

It is not hard to understand how Britain came to the brink. It has always been a reluctant dancer. Keeping sterling and rejecting Schengen are just the institutional realities of a much deeper malaise, fed by decades of puerile tabloid headlines about wine lakes, butter mountains and curved cucumbers. The whole of the Brussels administration is portrayed as if it were part of the Yes, Minister cast.

The problem is that most of these criticisms, two-dimensional as they were, still struck a chord. Trying to keep 28 member states aligned, ignoring the pressures of political survival, economic competition, demographics and entrenched interests was always going to be harder than herding cats.

The referendum on June 23 has started a soul-searching that will not end once the outcome is known, whether it is for Britain to stay or to leave. It has set off an irreversible process which will force hundreds of millions to determine whether the European coal and steel experiment was a success or not, and if not, whether it can still be saved and if there is the political will to do so.