The amount of gullible groupthink on any MN thread to do with Brexit is a bit depressing.
Cameron was forced to call the referendum against his judgement because Ukip won the 2014 EU election with 4.4 million votes and he was terrified that trying to kick the EU can down the road one more time would have lost the Tories the 2015 General Election. He was right.
Nonetheless, he was sure he could win the referendum by (i) gaining some cosmetic changes from the EU which he could sell as 'reform', and (ii) rigging the referendum campaign against Leave.
In the event, the EU gave him short shrift and he came home with nothing, though this was predictable because the EU does not think it needs reforming as it is doing exactly what it was set up to do, create an undemocratic European superstate by a mixture of bribery, stealth and corruption regardless of the wishes of the citizens of the affected countries.
The lies were all on the side of the remain campaign, aka Project Fear, and a year on many can now easily be seen for what they were. Leave was not a government organisation and had no power to draw up any kind of plan for after the vote so don't blame them for not doing so. That was the government's job.
The referendum was absolutely binding because Parliament said it was. Cameron also said it was: 'When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave'. The government repeated this in their propaganda leaflet: 'This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide'. So drop the 'advisory' BS.
If I deal with the economic propaganda I'll be here all day and nobody will read this, so I'll content myself with saying I think it unlikely we will be offered a FTA, not because it isn't the right thing for all concerned because it is, but because a 27 member EU is impossible to negotiate with. You will have noticed Barnier is just a mouthpiece with no authority to negotiate. We will be fine without a trade deal, it's German, Spanish and French exporters who will suffer. We trade with most of the rest of the world on WTO already, not a problem. The USA, India, China, Japan all trade with the EU on WTO terms, not a problem. They don't make contributions, put up with EU directives, freedom of movement, the ECJ, etc. and nor should we.
It's true that after leaving we may suffer a short period of economic wobbles but so what, we'll come through.
The alternative is staying in the EU and finding ourselves in ten or twenty years time reduced to a series of provinces (the EU already has plans for this) off the NW shore of an undemocratic Greater Germany stretching to Turkey. Why would we want that, for ourselves or our children?