No, we agreed to have an opinion poll on it that was explicitly non-binding, then the Tories changed the rules half way through, and some bloke said "we'll implement whatever is decided," and incidentally also said "I'll see this through to the end" and quit the day after the referendum when it didn't go the way he was expecting, due largely to his utter incompetence, which biased the campaigning heavily in the opposite direction.
The referendum was fundamentally flawed in several ways, and the only reason it wasn't struck down completely was because the elections watchdog couldn't do so exactly because it was non-binding and there was nothing to strike down.
It suited a whole bunch of very dodgy politicians to act like it was a mandate though, although it was very far from being so. Oddly enough, all the things they promised wouldn't happen have now happened or are now happening, such as all those promises that we'd definitely not leave the Common Market or Customs Union. Meanwhile, those who were worried that their ill-gotten gains in tax havens might be got at by incoming EU regulations are sunning themselves safely.
There's still some useful idiots round here who think that they won something with that referendum. Perhaps they did, but if that's the case then they're either one of those very rich oligarchs who are currently responsible for growing inflation, or being paid very well by one of them. It was a superb piece of divide-and-conquer by the ultra-rich hard right who are currently getting their wet dream of an unregulated low wage high inequality asset-stripper's paradise at everybody else's expense. "Taking back control" indeed, but for whom, and from whom?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
