I broke the news of Brexit to Britain – we still haven’t seen a single benefit

I remember the night of the referendum well. Our BBC results programme went on air at 10pm when the polls closed. Long before we were able to tell the country, it was obvious who had won.

The pollster John Curtice had made a chart showing how each district of the country would vote if the result were to be 50/50. When the first result came in from Sunderland, it revealed that voters there had opted for Brexit in greater numbers than the make-up of the area suggested. As more results came in, the pattern was repeated with a few exceptions. The electorate was clearly opting to leave.

But rules are rules. The BBC rule is never to announce a result until it is numerically proven. So finally, at 4.40am, John gave me the go-ahead to announce the result. I scribbled a note at the last minute mentioning that this was the reversal of the decision to stay in the Common Market in 1975, another referendum I had fronted. Then, on the spur of the moment, I went into overdrive: “The British people have spoken, and the answer is, we’re out,” I said. A statement of the obvious which, to my amazement, went viral.

The results programme was the finale of a series of some might say interminable debates about the Brexit issue in the press and on radio and television. One Question Time after another, where we balanced panels for and against, sometimes with maverick guests. Two in particular stick in my memory, when Eddie Izzard and Russell Brand, on different editions, joined politicians from the main political parties to take on Nigel Farage. Izzard and Brand were effective in mocking Farage, either teasing him or showing their outrage in a way MPs eschewed.

Then we had the leaders of the official campaigns, on their own, being questioned by the audience. David Cameron, in his best Winston Churchill mode, talking about the creation of the EU and its importance for peace in Europe. Michael Gove – emollient as ever – putting the Leave case and ignoring, as the entire Leave campaign had chosen to do, the half-truth about Britain’s £350m a week payment to the EU, which would be saved for the NHS to use. Memorably, Gove added that “we have had enough of experts”, presumably meaning all those economists and business people who said it would be a disaster. In effect: ignore the experts, vote with your gut feeling – that’s what a referendum is for.

The final debate I chaired was a grand affair with a huge audience on the eve of the poll. The BBC decided to present it from Wembley Arena, which I originally thought meant Wembley Stadium, expecting a crowd of thousands. But the arena was big enough to satisfy anyone’s vanity. The two official campaigns were on stage, and campaigners who were not included in the official campaign, people like Nigel Farage and representatives of nationalist parties, were in a boxing ring in the middle of the audience with the BBC’s Mishal Husain. She later told me she had suspected the way the referendum would go from the murmurs of approval she could hear around her every time Farage spoke.

The campaign itself, as I remember it, was not what might be called satisfactory. Not if it was intended to provide a rational basis for a decision. On the Remain side, the attempts to talk about the damage that would be done to the UK economy by leaving were supported by almost every prominent economist. Hard put to find the balance that the corporation’s charter required, the BBC resorted to frequent appearances by one of the few economists who disagreed, Patrick Minford of Cardiff University, who claimed there would be large economic benefits from leaving the EU. We hear rather less of him now.

I never thought the argument was about the economy anyway. The argument that hit home was about immigration, remorselessly cited by Farage – and still, 10 years after our departure from the EU, a driving force in British politics. It was also an issue that resonated with the audiences of Question Time week after week: the benefits immigration brought to Britain set against the perception of the country’s identity being altered.

It was the words “the British people have spoken” that hit home. Four parts of the United Kingdom all voting differently, but being aggregated as what? Wales by a modest margin, England by a larger margin wanting to leave, Scotland and Northern Ireland wanting to stay. A nation? Or a disunited kingdom?

Britain had given two fingers to the EU and, for the victors, that was enough. What it meant and whether it would benefit Britain could be worked out later. “The answer is we’re out” was a statement of the obvious, but also a statement of a seismic change in Britain’s relations with Europe, with America and with the rest of the world.

All in all, it was not an edifying campaign. Nor, in my view, a sensible way of deciding policy. This was the most important decision Britain faced in a generation. It could and should have been fought out in parliament and through general elections. To put to the country a yes or no question on such a fundamental issue for short-term political gain, as Cameron did, was a dereliction of political responsibility. His whistling that little tune as he turned back into No 10 after announcing his resignation summed up, for me, the apparent frivolity with which he had embarked on the enterprise.

As for the benefits of leaving, 10 years have passed – and we are still waiting.

David Dimbleby is a major presenter of current affairs programmes and documentaries for BBC television