Well, that's the question, isn't it? During the debates on what was then the referendum bill, one MP after another, up to and including the level of government

Well, that's the question, isn't it? During the debates on what was then the referendum bill, one MP after another, up to and including the level of government ministers, stood up and quite unambiguously supported the right of the people to make the decision. There was little if any hedging at that time. You can read the transcripts in Hansard, and you'll be hard pressed to find any MP who actually said what you just wrote, or anything like it. In the official government leaflet, sent to all households at considerable expense and amid considerable controversy, the explanation was also quite unambiguous. There was nothing in there about just giving the government a hint either. The legal difficulty seems to be that the enabling legislation for the referendum was poorly drafted and what was written didn't actually reflect what was being said during the parliamentary debates. Put another way, it's not clear that MPs were actually voting on what they thought they were voting on. I'm a little surprised that Pepper v Hart didn't seem to come up during the resulting confusion, but given the profound constitutional implications, the lack of explicit provision in the enabling legislation for what should happen after the referendum seems to be the main reason for the Supreme Court's majority decision today.