Vote in 1975, "Yes" won with 67.2%. Before the referendum, it was made clear that any result would not be legally binding.

Three times, in fact. Once in 1972 when the democratically elected parliament adopted the European Communities Act, once in 2008 when it adopted the European Union (Amendment) Act to adopt the Treaty of Lisbon, and once for the European Union Act 2011.

Unless, of course, you don't understand the concept of a parliamentary democracy.

Edit: And yes, as amok pointed out, there's also the 1975 referendum, which funnily enough wasn't binding either.

Just in case you're not getting the picture, referenda do not constitute a democratic mandate. In fact, there are very few countries in the world that use direct democracy for national matters, and with damn good reason. They have the legal effect of an opinion poll. Switzerland is one of the few exceptions I can think of off hand that employs legally binding referenda, and if you know anything about the Swiss legal and governmental system, you'll know that these referenda rarely turn out well - getting hijacked by the populists before discovering that implementing the decision is usually legally tricky.

A binding referendum would have served the Scottish people far better than their elected officials did with respect to the Balmedie sand dunes -- but don't tell that to Donald Trump.

I'm sure it might have, but at the end of the day, it is constitutionally impossible for any referendum in the UK to have legal effect, so even if such a referendum was held to allow Trump to build that golf course, it could have had 99% approving the construction and it still wouldn't have factored into the legal process beyond influencing the discretionary scope of the courts.

Of course, if Scotland ever becomes independent, they're free to establish a constitution so that direct democracy has a binding effect, but such moves have never turned out well.

Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.

I pray that this world soon decides to take out the trash.

What did i tell you? Recently, judges in London declared that Mei doesn't have the (law-provided) power to begin the procedure of Brexit. First the diplomats (Kerri) from america intervene in global news and spoil with few details what is going to follow, then the British judges decide just that... Poor British people aren't going to escape from the claws and fangs of the monstrosity called EU ultimately, did you really think it would be that easy?

And just in time, too! CETA is already signed, TTIP is soon to follow! We are all going to be trapped in the same spider's web! We will all stick together and sink slowly to our very own agonizing demise, becoming a nice atmosphere in the meantime; only if war doesn't strike before that, of course...

An excellent article here by The Lawyer (as in the magazine, not the man) regarding what the High Court decision actually means as well as illustration of the piss-poor state of affairs of the British press that contributed to this ridiculous farce.

tl;dr: The Prime Minster does not have the authority to unilaterally take any action that would remove or confer rights to British citizens. Any such action must be decided by the democratically elected parliament.

That's true, yet on the other hand there will be no checks if the parliament endorse things the screw the people and favor the elites.

As fuck up as the democracy system can be, it is better for the people then big government where the people are just a statistic for the elites ATM.

People who don't know shit may vote against their interest in democracy, but they will learn of their bad choice and may do better next time. Big government will pander endlessly to the elites that keep their pockets, hence there is little chance of changing for the better. Also big government is not immune to mistakes too.

In a democracy, mistakes need not be permanent, while with big government, mistakes is as permanent as the the wealth and power of the elites.

We've had nothing but piss-poor reporting and misinformation from the beginning of this debacle so why stop now.

The most disturbing thing out of all of this, is vast manipulation of the public by groups that have a vested personal interest in pushing the vote one way or another, rather than the greater good of the UK.

This is a storm in a teacup being hyped up by newspapers that are feeling increasingly irrelevant. Parliament will not block a vote for Article 50, for 3 reasons:

1) A lot of remain MPs respect the result of the referendum, while they may not want to do it, to go against a majority of 1m people would represent a significant contempt for a referendum that had an incredibly high turnout.

2) If parliament failed to pass article 50 it would force the prime minister to take this to a general election. The ruling conservative party would not want to risk this when they have 3 and a half years left of their elected term.

3) A general election is the last thing the main opposition party want right now, as the infighting has left them in a totally unelectable state.

This argument keeps being made, and it is in my opinion a misleading excuse to try to weaken the significance of the vote. Article 50 was very prevalent in the debates leading up to the referendum, when people voted they didn't (and couldn't) know all the details of what "kind" of brexit it would be, but they most definitely knew they wanted article 50 invoked, and that is what they voted for. The reason I feel this argument is so misleading is that it was not possible to vote for a particular kind of brexit, the only thing that could be voted for was to invoke article 50 and set about negotiating the best terms of exit. It was (and is) not solely in control of the UK how it exited because the EU isn't exactly throwing open the doors to the pick 'n' mix of things we can keep.

Both sides ran campaigns based on fear, hate, and lies. They based it on the scottish referendum where they did the same thing. The only thing the voters could get out of it was whether or not to invoke article 50, that is exactly what they voted for, and that is still exactly what is going to happen.

I am not even sure if we will leave anymore. I am sure that if we don't, the companies that raised their prices after the vote, will not lower them again. I am also sure with all the in fighting with the government, if we do, it will take longer than it should to leave. Politics in the UK, seems a very slow process with the majority of MP's seemingly more concerned about their jobs than the people they represent. I am old enough to have learnt that I should not trust anything that any of the parties say when they come in to power. The rich will look after themselves and the cuts will affect the majority of the rest whom the rich don't care about. If we are out, let's get the **** out. If not, then just tell us the referendum was bs and move on.

Hell i said more than I wanted, back to W1 :D

I don't see the EU wasting two years of time and effort to renegotiate the treaties on the chance that it will all be for nothing because a second referendum comes to a different result.
The negotiation will start when article 50 is invoked, not sooner. And once it is invoked the process is irreversible.

Honestly, let's just accept the fact that the Brexit is happening and let's get on with it.
Endless arguing about the validity of the referendum is futile.

From a propagandist's point of view, the pro-Brexit propaganda was actually a stroke of genius. It was the real elite basically railing against the fictitious "elite", exploiting the misconception among the unwashed masses that there is some kind of all-encompassing conspiracy among everyone with a seven-digit annual income to islamise the world and bring them all under the yoke of some notional anti-British authority.

In reality, the pro-Brexit campaign was spearheaded by a political and economic elite whose power base and chief sphere of influence is centred around Britain: Peter Cruddas, Stuart Wheeler, James Dyson, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Desmond, basically the sorts of people whose political influence and power will now only grow because the only legislative power will be concentrated solely in London, whose ear these elites have. These are the people who don't really have much political or financial capital outside of the UK.

And because these Britain-centric elites basically control the media in the UK, it enabled them to unleash the relentless barrage of propaganda that won them the referendum.

(Oddly enough, the left-wing media in the UK - the Guardian and Observer in particular- is largely controlled by journalism trusts as opposed to "rich elites". The only politically influential owner of a left-wing news outlet in the UK is that of the anti-Putin Lebedev family, which owns the Independent.)

The only genuinely neutral news outlet in the UK - the BBC - has had its reputation successfully dragged through the mud by the far right, who have conducted a rather successful campaign to paint it as some kind of left-wing stooge, such that people have been indoctrinated not to trust it. We've had the same problem with a far-right smear campaign against the ARD public broadcaster here in Germany.

Ultimately though, the ones to blame are the British public, who have time and again demonstrated to spectacular effect that for the most part, they are completely fucking incapable of any independent thought or research. Most Brits that I've spoken to about Brexit don't even have the slightest clue how politics or the wider world actually works. Whenever I'm in the UK visiting family, I avoid talking about politics, lest I feel the urge to smash my head through a door, and as soon as a political discussion unfolds, I just leave the room. I can't be doing with the ignorance and the conspiracy theory screaming.

At the end of the day, the information was out there for people to find. It's not like there were Chinese-style net filters or the country was reliant on a North Korean-styled intranet. But most people chose to rely on The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, Twitter and Facebook for their "news".

And that, good sir, is why I have absolutely nothing but fucking contempt for the British. Not because of the way they voted, because of the way they chose to be lazy and ignorant out of fear that they might discover that they are not quite so inherently superior as they thought..

As opposed to ?

Which is the marvellous Country Of The Clever People, which population is immune to demagogy and anti-intellectualist propaganda, and where (just as miraculously as in the realm of economy) the Free Market of Ideas automatically benefits the most enlightened, fair and accurate worldviews ?

Because, you know, I'd be gladly moving there if it was on Earth.

Honestly, political discourse is on the whole a lot more rational in most Western European countries, including (and perhaps despite the SVP) Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, although excluding countries like Greece. A lot of that is largely to do with a much more balanced news outlet landscape in those countries.

Of course, that's not to say that there aren't plenty of extreme nativist and communist idiots in countries like France and Germany, but they don't dictate the tone, despite perhaps the disproportionate amount of media coverage that they get. Conversely, there are obviously plenty of rational political debaters in countries like the UK and the US, but the media landscape in those countries prevents balanced reporting, and centrist viewpoints seem to be pushed to the wayside.