Ten years on from one of the most toxic political debates in recent British history, it might - just might - be possible to take a longer, more considered view.
The first step is any such assessment must be to understand why the Brexit debate was so conflicted. Here, the key fact is that Brexit disrupted all the usually homogeneous political blocs.
The British establishment was divided in a way that is historically rare. The mainstream members of Britain’s capitalist class were in favour of remaining in the European Union - and in general, the larger the corporation, the more pro-EU.
But the normally reliable political representative of capital, the Tory party, was badly split and thus incapable of acting in a coherent manner to pursue the pro-EU line. Indeed, it was precisely these divisions within the Tory party under David Cameron’s leadership that produced the promise of a Brexit referendum as a method of, he hoped, externalising and resolving Tory splits.
But divisions on the right were not confined to the Tories. While the Tory party has always functioned as an electoral bloc whose policy is predominantly shaped by captains of industry and high representatives of the state and wider establishment, it nevertheless relies on the votes of a majority of the middle class and a minority of the conservative working class.
