Picture the scene. It's the early hours of June 24, 2016.

The Remain campaign is celebrating a narrow victory in the Brexit referendum. The Leave campaign is commiserating its defeat. Nigel Farage is many pints deep.

It's easy to forget, but this is the outcome most expected. From pundits to pollsters, the consensus was the Leavers would lose. Then came a result which shook British, European and world politics to its foundations.

We've been dealing with the tremors of that earthquake ever since - for nearly three years now - as Theresa May battles to build a parliamentary majority around her Brexit agreement.

The latest twist to that tale is she won't be allowed a third "meaningful vote" if the deal remains "substantially the same".

The thorny issue of the UK's withdrawal from the EU has consumed our politicians, dominated our news and, in the long run, is likely to change all of our lives in various ways, whether small or large.

Allow us here at STV News to pose the question: what if we had voted to Remain instead?

We're about to enter the world of complete and utter speculation.

In fact, that may not even be the right word. To speculate is to look at what could happen in the future; today, we're looking at what could have happened but didn't.

But this counter-factual will hopefully show how a seismic political event like Brexit can change everything.

And to get us started, let's take a trip down memory lane.

It's June 2016. David Cameron is Prime Minister. The referendum is in full swing. Andy Murray is about to begin what will be his second Championship-winning run at Wimbledon.

In the final polls before the vote, it seems as though voters are moving in Remain's direction. On the night, Cameron is reported to be confident, and shortly after polls close, Farage concedes "it looks like Remain will edge it".

They were all wrong - and the result was the shock triumph of the Leave campaign, followed by the Prime Minister's resignation.

If Remain had come out victorious, Cameron would have emerged before 10 Downing Street, not to quit, but to bask in victory. He would have stayed on as PM.

Not forever, it must be said. Before his general election win in 2015, when the Tories took an unexpected majority of seats, Cameron said he would give up the top job at some point in his second term.

Even if Brexit hadn't happened, it's possible we could have had a new Prime Minister by now. If he was still in office, Cameron would likely be in the twilight of his premiership, paving the way for his successor.

Feasibly, one option to succeed him could be Theresa May, who at this point might have been home secretary for nearly nine years.

Another possibility would have been George Osborne, Cameron's ally and perhaps still Chancellor of the Exchequer (rather than a newspaper editor).

The likes of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, distrusted by the PM's team after backing the Leave campaign, might struggle to get into the ministerial ranks.

Then again, Eurosceptic feeling would not have gone anywhere, with a Ukip still led by Farage likely to keep posing an electoral threat to the Conservatives (and Labour).

By now, a few pro-Leave figures might have found their way back into the Prime Minister's inner circle, if only to keep the Brexiteers happy.

The current leader of the opposition first took the role after Ed Miliband's general election defeat in 2015, and was forced to fight for it again shortly after the Brexit result.

Only four days after Leave's victory, more than three quarters of Labour's MPs voted to say they had no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, due to his perceived half-hearted involvement in the Remain campaign.

This brought about the spectacle of Labour and Tory leadership contests happening, briefly, at the same time, before Theresa May was anointed the new Conservative leader and Prime Minister.

Let's imagine a scenario with no Brexit to spark a leadership challenge against Corbyn. Those within his party opposed to him may have found another excuse for a coup some other time - or maybe not.

But Corbyn's second leadership victory, defeating Owen Smith in September 2016, cemented and strengthened his position - as did events the following year.

The snap election announced by Theresa May in April 2017 was meant to propel her into the Brexit talks in a position of strength, with her majority increased and Labour routed.

Instead, blunders such as the "dementia tax", weird gaffes like "fields of wheat" and the Prime Minister's refusal to participate in debates saw her poll lead shrink and, come June, her party shed seats.

The Conservatives held onto their status as the largest group in the Commons but lost their majority, with Corbyn's stock at an all-time high after Labour gained around 30 seats.

Since then, the party has promoted itself as a government-in-waiting, and its leader as the next Prime Minister, although more recently, Labour has fallen back in the polls.

But without his second leadership victory, and his stronger-than-expected showing in the snap election, where would Corbyn be?

He might have been forced out of his job by now; or, his leadership might have been galvanised by something else.

In any case, it seems unlikely David Cameron would have defied the Fixed-term Parliaments Act he himself introduced in order to hold an early election.

That would mean that, in our alternate reality, we would still be on course for a 2020 election, as set out in the law.

On the face of it, this would appear to be good news for the SNP, who would have kept 54 of Scotland's 59 seats claimed in the 2015 vote (reduced from 56 after two MPs, Natalie McGarry and Michelle Thomson, resigned the party whip).

But the Holyrood election in 2016 came in the month before the Brexit referendum, and saw the SNP narrowly lose its own majority.

Nicola Sturgeon formed a minority government, with her party's manifesto committing it to a second independence referendum only if there was a "significant and material change" in circumstances from the first plebiscite in 2014.

As an example of such "material change", the SNP explicitly named Scotland being forced out of the EU against the wishes of Scottish voters - a scenario which came to pass.

If the UK had voted to Remain, it seems unlikely the First Minister would have spent much time talking up the prospect of a fresh independence vote.

Talks of indyref2 hurt Sturgeon in the 2017 snap election but mobilised supporters of independence.

With Scottish politics perhaps more focused on domestic issues like health and education, how would the First Minister be faring in the Remain-voting alternate universe?

And last but not least, without the success of the campaign for Brexit - and some of its populist, anti-immigration rhetoric - would political momentum have swung in the same way to this guy in the subsequent US presidential election?

As with the answers to all of the questions posed here, we'll never really know.