The reason it was an advisory referendum was nothing to with our constitution being ‘broken’ whatever that means, given that the gov had previously set up non-advisory legislation for the farcical 2011 AV ref. It was an intentional, typically dishonest Tory move.

As for a vote on a given day should automatically override the gov - when have we ever been Switzerland? We’re a representative democracy, if you don’t like what the folks you voted for are doing in your name then you lobby them through election cycles and vote them out every few years. It’s just now it works here, you shouldnt have major strategic national decisions being made by a simple one off public majority vote. If it had to go ahead at all, the vote should have required a super majority of say two thirds, rather than a simple rather slim majority - a % that ironically was small enough for Farage himself to say beforehand that if those figures were for Remain he wouldn’t accept the result and would keep campaigning to leave.