That depends on how binding the referendum is. (It is not some sort of universal truth that a referendum has to be some sort of absolute thing that has to be fo

That depends on how binding the referendum is. (It is not some sort of universal truth that a referendum has to be some sort of absolute thing that has to be followed.) I would guess it also depends on how detailed and clear the referendum is. Just imagine the following situation: There is a referendum on a carbon tax that wins a majority. The referendum itself doesn’t give any further details beyond the question “Do you want a carbon tax?” Does this hypothetical vote give the executive the complete authority to create a carbon tax, including all the myriad (unanswered by the referendum) policy decisions that would have to be answered when implementing such a tax? One sentence obviously does not make a tax and with a carbon tax you would probably have to write a book to arrive at something useful and implementable. Why does the executive get all this power and the legislative gets none of that power? In fact, creating (not really creating, but I wanted to avoid writing “legislating”, which would, however, be the more appropriate word here) a carbon tax (including all the detail questions concerning its exact implementation you have to answer when doing that) is more of a legislative task, anyway! The executive isn’t even supposed to do things like that. So what gives the executive that kind of power and the legislative none of that power? Why should that be the case after a referendum? I know that invoking Article 50 is not the same as a carbon tax and I know that’s a more complex process (without a referendum I would expect both the legislative and the executive to be heavily involved in such a process), but I just wanted to give a clear-cut example illustrating the problem. All this, by the way, comes back to a fundamental issue with all referenda. The executive could just as well ignore the referendum. That’s undisputed. So you can’t really use the argument that parliament could vote against leaving. The executive could just as well decide against leaving. The issue here is more about who gets what power when making decisions – and why the executive or the legislative should get what kind of power and when.