In fact it was. It was a simple vote between leaving and remaining, with the exact details of both options being left undefined. Certainly our remainer establishment would have wasted no time in interpreting a Remain vote as permission to rapidly speed up integration.

The pathologically EU-loyal British establishment is now trying to destroy the vote via the following simple trick:

1. Declare that there's no way to leave without a "deal"

2. Make it clear to the EU they can dictate any terms they want whatsoever because the UK will under no circumstances walk away from the table.

3. EU dictates terms that are essentially the same as not leaving, or actually even worse.

4. Establishment declares that this "deal" is the same thing as leaving and tries to ram it through, or failing that, to cancel the whole thing by claiming that the UK can't leave unless the EU agrees due to <generic chaos>. Both outcomes are fine by them because it establishes for good the principle that leaving the EU should be as impossible as an American State seceding from the Union, which is what they want.

What we see at the moment are people actually working in the real economy, like port operators, saying they're prepared for no deal and there'd be no disruption at all. The EU has also quietly agreed various unrelated agreements to e.g. keep planes flying and even granting London a financial passport, the thing they said they'd never actually do. The fact that "no deal" actually means already "a bunch of small continuity deals" has gone largely unnoticed in the UK.

But ultimately now it's gone far beyond port disruption, mobile roaming costs or other trivial things. The British people are receiving a message loud and clear that the entire ruling class simply will not let the UK leave unless the EU agrees, despite it being a theoretically self-governing nation. If the UK doesn't leave without the EU's agreement then many will conclude it's actually a dictatorship.