Politically nobody knows how today will end. Unlike the dawn of a great battle, where there are two sides and for one of which the day will end well, or at least better than the other, there are in the UK such splits and factions that however it ends, few, if any will be winners.
It is worth reflecting that had Labour been in power, or had the coalition between the Tories and Lib dems continued, the present crisis would just not be there. Neither would the Union of the UK be under threat. This is a crisis brought on by the schism in the Tory party which is part of its DNA.
One part is internationalist, outward looking and understands and admires the huge political and economic success which has brought the greatest unity, peace and prosperity to the European continent since the fall of Rome, with the greatest individual sovereignty of citizens ever known.
The other hates Europe and harks back to something which is gone, a nostalgia to do with Englishness mainly, which is green and pleasant and anti-foreign. An empire upon which the sun never set and when doors across the world opened as an Englishman approached. They feel threatened by an interdependent world and want to return to the cosy nation on our own, together. Under everlasting Tory paternal nationalism.
In the end this minority, as that is what it represents, will be finally defeated because the rising generation all across the nations of the UK shun it. And the old are growing older and eventually will fade, like the memories of their past and their dreams of a future which is not and never was there.
What today might tell us is the price the country must pay in this terrible ongoing agony of a broken government founded on an unsustainable political fault line.