The post you are reporting:
As far as I can establish, this 'advisory' bit appears only on a briefing paper to MPs. Call me Jesuitical, call me casuistical, but while there may be nothing in the 2015 Act itself to say that the referendum result is binding, neither is there anything in it to say that it is not. In other words, the Act is not explicit on the referendum's constitutional status. And MPs voted for the Act, not the briefing paper. My guess is that the briefing paper only made a public appearance post factum. But all that's largely irrelevant anyway, since there was nothing on the ballot paper about it, and I don't remember it's featuring in the debates, so most voters (myself included) would have understood that, whatever the outcome, the result would determine the government's course of action. It would seem rather pointless if all the huff and puff, ire, claim and counter-claim, big red buses, painful fence-sitting, expenditure (legal or illegal), family break-ups, political fallouts, then endless 'negotiations' were only a prelude to our being told it was just an opinion-tester anyway. The referendum established the principle of an EU exit; the fact that the practice of doing so has been such an embarrassing Tory shambles is another matter. (Unless, of course, you see this as a calculated process by Remain elites and alt staters to appear to try to get us out while doing everything behind the scenes to keep us in.) It's up to government to bring it about: we've already been asked.
