On 09/11/2016 16:31, tim... wrote:
But it was a non-binding advisory vote.

Oh come on

The Tories are implementing it (because it was voted for), because to do
anything else would see them lose considerable support to UKIP at the
next election.

They are following the result of the referendum because politics forces
them to. not because they are legally required to do so.

I realize all that. But this, in turn, is only because they didn't
explain in the first place that it wasn't intended to be binding.

(Apparently when the Referendum Bill was going through Parliament they
*did* brief MPs that it wasn't binding.)

If the government had intended it to be binding on them, they could
have written one line into the referendum Act to say so. Which would
have also saved them an embarrassing defeat in the High Court (and, I
predict, a repeat in the Supreme Court).

They didn't bother to do that because they had no expectation of losing,

Indeed. Idiocy on their part.

Mind, if they'd made it binding in the Bill it might not have passed.