It didn't take long for the list of warnings about Brexit to start coming true.

A shellshocked City looked on as share prices crashed and the pound hit a 30-year low.

The value of Barclays and RBS plunged by 30 per cent as the banks pleaded for a delay to the start of EU withdrawal talks, threatening, if not, to start relocating parts of their business immediately.

The Prime Minister resigned, confirming fears voiced by the SNP and Labour that the Conservatives might lurch to the right.

And the break-up of the UK, predicted by former Prime Minister Sir John Major, loomed larger than ever as Nicola Sturgeon set Scotland on course for a second independence referendum within the next two years.

All this should have troubled the leaders of the Leave campaign, and perhaps it did.

"No need to rush into things," was the startled-sounding message from Brexiters-in-chief Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.

(Too late, as it turned out. In a sign our soon-to-be former partners will play hardball, The EU said Britain should quit "as soon as possible" to avoid further uncertainty.)

But if the chaos alarmed the Leave camp, it should have raised a few nagging doubts in Nicola Sturgeon too.

All those warnings, delivered by serious, sensible, credible voices were glibly dismissed as "scaremongering" by the Leave side during the long, ill-tempered campaign

Yet they unfolded as surely and certainly as a proof being chalked on blackboard by a maths professor.

The Leave campaign's refusal to engage seriously with the detailed, considered objections of economists and business leaders was lifted straight from the Yes Scotland playbook in the 2014 independence debate.

In that campaign the cry "scaremongering" went up each time a think tank produced an unhelpful report. An expert who proffered an inconvenient view was dismissed as "biased" or, worse, "talking Scotland down".

Rarely was there an attempt to examine, challenge or mount a proper counter-argument.

The Leave camp latched onto this post-fact politics and revelled in it.

"People in this country have had enough of experts," declared Mr Gove at one point.

But he knew it would strike a chord. The EU referendum merely confirmed what we learned two years ago: that in a complex debate, coloured by intense distrust of the establishment, shouting "scaremongering" works.

Ms Sturgeon has lots of reasons to play for time over what is now a near-certain re-run of the 2014 poll.

The SNP's economic case for independence needs to be rebuilt after the collapse in oil prices.

The question of currency – a piggy-back pound or the unpopular euro? – has to be addressed.

But the biggest reason is this: she needs to know how Brexit will turn out.

If it goes badly, if the EU does play hardball, if the "scaremongering" actually turns out to be legitimate and well-founded concern, she may have cause to be wary.

In a second independence campaign, it would make critical and questioning voices harder to shout down.

If unpicking a 43-year-old, slightly semi-detached union proves as painful as the Remainers warned, Scots might baulk at leaving a much older and deeper union.

Of course, if the Brexiters are right, everything changes.

If the decision to leave the EU produces only a temporary, minor shock, the "scaremongering" will be exposed as just that: baseless Project Fear. The worries many felt about leaving the UK in 2014 might ease.

Time will tell, and Ms Sturgeon will want to take as long as possible to weigh up the mood.

The next referendum will be different from the last in many ways.

The goalposts have been moved almost to a new pitch. The prospect of a Scotland in the EU becoming independent of a UK outside the bloc throws up fresh questions about borders, passports, trade and currency.

Will staying in the EU look a better bet, economically, than staying in the UK?

Will the different results in Scotland and most parts of the UK convince more people the two countries have become irreconcilably different?

Whether these issues are debated seriously, or sink beneath accusations of "scaremongering" and a phoney contest to be seen as "positive," we are about to find out.