The decision after the fact to treat the referendum as if it were a binding, simple-majority-rule, measure, OTOH, is ceetainly questionable. There were plenty

The decision after the fact to treat the referendum as if it were a binding, simple-majority-rule, measure, OTOH, is ceetainly questionable. There were plenty of questionable things about the referendum, but I really don't think this was one of them. If you look at Hansard during the debates on the enabling legislation, one MP after another spoke in terms of giving the people the final say, or words clearly to that effect. If you look at the official booklet, sent to every household in the UK by the government at taxpayers' expense, it too contained wording that clearly implied the people would decide. Personally I'm of the view that we need more direct democracy to fix our political systems rather than less, and I see little democratic legitimacy in arguments about Parliamentary sovereignty given the alternatives available to us today. So for me, whether or not I agree with the result, as a matter of principle I would have preferred the referendum to be absolutely legally binding anyway. But even if our most senior lawyers held that it was not, it seems quite clear that even before the vote the expectation both of Parliament and of the general public was that the referendum result should decide the matter.