They actively chose something that you say was poorly defined but which was widely understood to be a very dramatic and potentially dangerous shift for the country. If you can't blame them for picking a poorly defined option out of some jingoistic notion of what the UK should be, what can you blame anyone for?
I mean, can you believe this?
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1800/1*piGY6KAwYsDSweClC...
https://s-i.huffpost.com/gen/1521502/thumbs/o-SUN-FRONT-PAGE...
On top of that it has been proven that the leave campaign lied and broke the law regarding funding.
Like that David Cameron clown, for instance.
I think one can. Britain is a democracy. An old one. If one votes for a dramatic departure from the status quo without asking how it will be executed, that's a failure of civic duty. Voters own a share in their democracies' successes and failures; economically, politically and morally.
As an aside, I think terms like 'jingoistic' aren't helpful to discussion. I've never quite understood why it's jingoistic to prefer UK sovereignty but not jingoistic to prefer European sovereignty.
Something like 40% of our trade is with the EU. Having an open trading environment, especially for the things we do really, really well, is what helps keep the UK as one of the richest countries in the world.
The majority of the UK runs at a loss. We have a significant number of high earners who come from abroad, many (most?) from the EU who contribute significantly to our tax base and productivity.
The majority of the laws we've enacted, because the EU required us to, would have been enacted anyway. We're unlikely to change most of them materially post-Brexit. There are important exceptions, of course. We'll probably be a lot less nice to our rural community post-Brexit, for example, as they've received a lot of funding on the coattails of French farming unions courtesy of the CAP.
The one big exception is with free movement of people. This was a big driver of Brexit and, although it's had a small, negative economic effect; it's had a huge negative political effect. But almost entirely of the "they're taking our jobs" variety. Something that doesn't really impact high earners (other than tradesmen are now cheaper and better).
Now, I don't happen to think that Brexit will be a disaster. I just think it was stupid. It's dumping our economy back a decade and it'll take a decade to get back to where we are now. Also, as it's likely to royally stuff up our financial services and biopharmacy industries, we might end up with a more balanced economy by accident.
I also happen to believe that, long term, the UK being out of the EU is probably the right thing to do. We've been a brake on what they've wanted to do for a generation. We're just not culturally aligned. But Brexit was a bad idea, badly executed.
hope that helps.
Forgetting for a second the whole thing was just a ploy to win over UKIP voters, it is ridiculous that this far down the line leave still hasn't been defined. A small part of me thinks that maybe May is playing the 4D chess long-con, and deliberately being as incompetent as possible to drive us to a last-minute remain outcome. Ockham's Razor says otherwise though