ichkeria - // It should not have been held because it wasn't a suitable item for a referendum
Millions declared themselves unqualified to say yay or nay. //
I think you have to be careful of inferring, or even saying, that the electorate are not bright enough to decide their own future.
You could argue, similarly, that every time an election is held, the 'average' voter does not have sufficient grasp of the issues to make a properly informed decision.
But that is not, and never has been a reason to deny the man in the street a vote, that is the essence of democracy.
Otherwise you end up with an imagined elite who judge themselves able to make these decisions, and the rest of us will simply have to go along with what they say, because 'they know best'.
Since there would be no individual in that 'elite' who did not have their own power ambitions to feed, and their own enemies to do down, this is not a sound basis for a system of government, which is why we have the system we use now.
A large number of people fought and died to give me the freedom to have a choice about whether or not I wish to have a say in decisions that directly affect me. I am not about to hand that over to some supercilious suit in Whitehall because they think I voted the 'wrong way'.