On Tuesday, it’ll be 10 years since the Brexit vote on June 23, 2016, but let me take you back to June 24, the morning after. We’ve woken up, the promises on the side of the Leave buses are glinting in the sun, Gove and Johnson are shuffling behind their podiums, surprised by what they’ve been and gone and done, and my first reaction, my first thought, the initial kick in the gut was: that’s it then, first Brexit, now Scottish independence.

Fortunately, ten years on, independence hasn’t happened, and in retrospect it’s hard to know why concern about it was my first thought. I suppose the feeling was that if a campaign as hollow, misleading and wrong as the campaign for Brexit could succeed, a campaign for Scottish independence could succeed using similar tactics. I also initially thought the line about Scotland being ripped out of the EU against its will would work for the SNP and boost their support. As I say, the morning of June 24, 2016: depressing.

But having said all that, we know what happened next, to the SNP, to the Brexiteers, to all of us. A few harsh truths have also become clearer in the decade since the vote: harsh truths that will hopefully stop us from doing something similar all over again. Here are a few.

1: Referendums are rubbish

I’m trying to think of a metaphor for what the referendums in 2014 and 2016 did to us, our public life, private lives, politics, culture, and how we feel about each other, and the best I can come up is one of those machines that shreds paper: it goes in whole and comes out in bits.

But referendums aren’t just bad for us culturally, emotionally and personally, they’re a rubbish idea. When Ted Heath was under pressure to hold one on the Common Market, he took the view that now looks elitist but was realistic: in a parliamentary democracy, it’s irresponsible to leave a decision on a critical, complex issue to a one-question vote. Is it ever a good idea to reduce complicated questions to yes or no? No.

But if we are to have more referendums, God forbid, we should at least ensure a........

© Herald Scotland