So we are where we are and no one is quite sure where we go next. But when – if – we ever get our bearings, there is going to have to be an inquest into how we got here.

When looked at from continental Europe, the referendum result was less of a mystery than it was to many people in the UK.

In Brussels, Paris and Berlin, they have watched with polite bemusement the way they are caricatured in the British media; the ignorance, the misapprehensions and sheer indifference of the UK’s press and public to the politics of Europe.

Every newsroom in the land must take a share of the blame for that. It’s almost a rite of passage for foreign correspondents and desk editors to know every detail of the US political system, but Europe has always seemed just a bit too foreign.

And yet, as we are discovering, it’s getting Europe wrong that can really muck you up.

Lord Puttnam, a Fellow of this parish, has spoken out about the damage done by excessive impartiality during the campaign. He described the BBC coverage, in particular, as “constipated”, for giving an ill-deserved credibility to the promises of the Leave campaign in the name of balance.

He has a point, but – as the US media is discovering with Donald Trump – it is very hard to be both balanced and sceptical when politicians repeatedly say things they know to be untrue.  “He claims the sky is maroon, while she claims it is blue,” is perfectly balanced, but deeply unsatisfactory journalism.

But the world didn’t become “post-factual” overnight. Press and politicians have been complicit in portraying “Brussels” as an undemocratic monster for decades.

If you tell people for long enough that something is out to get them, perhaps you shouldn’t be surprised when, in the end, they believe you.

I am not talking about bent bananas or the “threat” posed by Brussels to British delicacies such as the prawn-cocktail crisp. That’s just froth.

Much more debilitating has been the wilful ignorance of the way that the institutions of the EU work. It is that which has allowed politicians to claim they are being dictated to by “unelected bureaucrats” and to blame “Brussels” when the fault is often entirely theirs.

A lot of this stems from the press and TV journalists simply not knowing enough about the workings of the EU and about political opinion on the continent to be able paint an accurate picture. Caricature is much easier.

Many even struggle with the difference between the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, which is the final arbiter of EU law, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). This sits in Strasbourg and has nothing to do with the EU.

When the ECHR ruled that British prisoners must have the vote, in British minds that was just another outrage imposed on us by “Brussels”.

How ironic it would be it we started concentrating on the politics of the EU only after we had left it. Already, we are finding we need to pay attention.

Article 50, anyone? We’re suddenly all experts on that little-known clause of the Lisbon Treaty.

We now know that it’s a brutal and uncompromising conveyor belt to the exit door that puts any member state wanting to leave in an extremely weak negotiating position. How clearly was that reported before we voted?

It would have been better, surely, to have known about this – and a whole lot more – before we cast the biggest vote of our lives.

 

James Mates is Europe editor at ITV News.