Well, Jim, in a referendum you may be asking a mass of people, most of whom are ignorant of the complexities of an issue that has been sold to them as a simple yes/no, to make crucial decisions affecting generations to come far more than it affects them. Qualifications not required. If you want to know how ignorant, just read the posts of any brexit supporter here. Quite simply, there is no way that they can have properly assessed, or even tried to assess, the pro and cons of what they're being asked to decide on. This was a Tory referendum called by a lily-livered Tory who was running scared of Farage, one of the biggest racist scumbags in the country. The vast majority of Tories voted leave, and a survey showed that 48% of Tory voters consider themselves to be racists. A Tory referendum with a campaign that pandered to the xenophobic sentiments of Tory voters and disaffected (by years of Tory austerity) working class people. That's why we're leaving, and that's why I don't bloody believe in referendums. A referendum is a manipulator of ordinary people which puts them at the mercy of raving zealots on either side of the argument. We choose politicians to gen up on issues and we pay them to know what they're doing. If we don't like what they do we boot them out. We never need to sidestep parliamentary democracy.
What this totally ignores is the fact that following the (non-binding) referendum the matter was put to Parliament, where the question of whether to issue article 50 was supported by a large majority, from both sides of The House.
I know you will say that to do otherwise would have been political suicide, but that means that you think that 'remain' MPs who voted to issue Article 50 are as self-serving as any others.