However a friend on FB unfriended me after he declared all leavers were racist idiots

That is certainly wrong and pretty much bullshit. What is true, though, is that virtually all racist idiots voted leave.

John Scalzi put it much more succinctly:

(from http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/06/22/hey-scalzi-do-you-have...) :

"Two, while not everyone who might vote “Leave” is an appalling racist and/or low-information nationalist, it’s pretty clear that nearly every appalling racist/low-info nationalist is voting “Leave,” and that the people engineering the Leave vote are perfectly happy to leverage those folks to get what they want. If you find yourself on the same side as appalling racists/ignorant “patriots”, you might ask yourself why, and additionally whether you might be more appalling and/or ignorant than you’d like to admit."

Er, the Leave campaign was expressly against free travel, and it's kind of silly to think you'd get the same trade terms leaving the EU. So the choice you provide to support the idea that maybe the leavers have it right is neither one the leavers are offering (on the travel part) nor one that is remotely realistic on either point as a result of voting leave (it's something that might have been achievable by staying in and advocating a different course for the EU.)

And you live within a representative, rather than direct, democracy which features non-binding referenda; the people speak with binding authority through elections of representatives. There may be reasons that the government should put the results of the referendum into policy, but appeals to the nature of the system of government do not provide that reason.

1. Free travel != immigration policy

2. Referendum > Representatives (the only reason we use representatives is because referendums don't scale)

In California, constitutionally, the power of referendum and initiative is reserved to the people, and does trump there per our the legislature. So, a system of government argument of the type you made would work for California.

The UK, however, has no such reserved powers of the people, but instead has parliamentary supremacy. The referendum is not, in that system, superior to the representatives.

Accepted. Definitely pinch of salt.