Whatever the result, future generations will look back on the vote as a national embarrassment.

Some readers will notice that I haven’t written anything about politics for a while. That’s simply because there has been no news about anything other than the EU referendum.

This campaign is something I should be enjoying. It’s normally inspiring to see the whole country become engaged in politics for a few weeks. But this time I just feel detached. I used to think the question of Britain’s EU membership was important, but the trivialisation of the whole debate has proved me wrong.

All the two misinformation campaigns in this referendum have succeeded in doing is to make me forget everything I thought I knew about the EU.

Let’s start with the Leave campaign, who have focused almost exclusively on the topic of immigration. It’s obvious they are on firm ground here because the open door policy between EU member states is undeniable. Then they also pledge to hand an extra £100m a year to the NHS, because everyone likes the NHS. Nevermind that they are not a government so cannot deliver any of the things they’ve promised.

After we vote to Leave, they hope to transform us into this wonderful, outward-looking country able to sign trade deals with the entire world. I fully believe that this is what the likes of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove aspire to, but the thing is the genie will have been let out of the bottle. The referendum will have been won on the issue of immigration and that’s where voters will want to see immediate results regardless of what it does to our global trade.

If Vote Leave can only convince voters with such a Little Englander campaign then it is probably best that we continue being babysitted by the EU in our relationship with the rest of the world.

But let’s not pretend for a minute that the Little Englander mantle has been exclusively taken up by the Leave campaign. On the other side we have the farce of a Remain campaign who want to stay in the EU yet don’t even talk about the EU, let alone say anything positive about it.

Maybe that’s because this is the same EU who rightly called David Cameron’s bluff and gave him nothing in his renegotiation of Britain’s membership knowing he would campaign for a Remain vote regardless. If he was actually interested in changing the nature of Britain’s relationship with the EU then surely he would have had a longer renegotiation with the threat of a referendum as a nuclear option only to be used if he didn’t get what he wanted.

The consequences of Cameron’s failure to get any kind of substantial reform are far reaching. If we vote Remain then for a generation we will be laughed out of the building whenever we demand any kind of changes to EU rules that might be in Britain’s benefit. “Awww, why don’t you hold a referendum on it?” – you can already hear the Eurocrats taunting the next time we are unhappy with something.

To put it simply, a vote for Remain can now only be a vote for ‘everything is wonderful and nothing needs to change’. Sorry Dave, but for more than five years as Prime Minister your Eurosceptic persona made us believe the opposite was the case.

Yet even with our membership as it currently is, there was a positive case to be made for remaining in the EU. But instead Cameron decided to do what he always does and trudge out an army of economists and bankers to tell us exactly the same nightmarish things will happen if we vote against him as would have done if we voted against him in the general election or the Scots did in the independence vote.

Any talk of the benefits the EU brings us was seen as undesirable by Cameron who preferred to focus solely on how a union of our allies would rub their hands at the thought of punishing us if we left. Even treasury reports had to be doctored to show only the Brexit scenarios Cameron wanted us to see.

Annoyingly, I think Project Fear will work and one of the most mediocre, unambitious and unprincipled Prime Ministers in British history will again get his way as we hold our noses and vote for Remain.

But whichever way the referendum goes, there are three things I can guarantee will happen. 1) The world won’t come to an end. 2) We will eventually move on, comfortable with the decision we have made. 3) In decades to come, documentaries will be made ridiculing the referendum in which both campaigns treated the British people like toddlers.

I’d tell you to think carefully about which way you vote, but don’t bother. Neither campaign thought carefully about the issues either.