It's important to distinguish between Brexit and voting for Brexit. The question on the referendum was: > Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the Eur

It's important to distinguish between Brexit and voting for Brexit. The question on the referendum was: > Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? and the options were: > Remain a member of the European Union and > Leave the European Union Let's assume for the sake of argument that the UK could in fact do better outside the EU. Let's also assume that most economists, trade experts, business groups, politicians, etc from all across the political spectrum agreed with this. Let's even assume that the consensus among all those experts was so strong that you'd pretty much have to be an idiot to think the the UK should remain in the EU. It would still be dumb to vote "leave" on that particular referendum because it doesn't say anything about how Brexit is to be implemented. For things like this whose implementation is very complicated and there are many ways to get it wrong and negate many or even most of the benefits you were hoping to get from it there needs to be at least two separate referendums. The first referendum directs the government to work out how it will be implemented--writing all necessary legislation, negotiating all necessary treaties and trade agreements, and so on. The second referendum would be on whether or not to accept that implementation.