British Euroskepticism has been a political force for decades and the risk of a Brexit has always been an implicit source of negotiating leverage for the UK.

Yes, but now the UK is out over its skis. It has much less leverage now than its MPs seem to realize. The clock is ticking — they are headed for a hard Brexit in 10 weeks and everyone knows they’ve not planned for it.

Exactly, it's like killing the hostages.

I think people undersell this - I can't find the really good analysis I recall reading about this right now, but what it said was polling over the last couple of decades shows there has actually been majority support (often over 60%!) to at least reduce participation in the EU for the last 20 years.

According to this other polling [1], the appetite to do a full exit has not been as high, but still close to 50/50. I think in general people are doing a massive disservice to their own understanding when they try and take a minority "fringe racist" view and try to say that is the reason for all voters of Brexit, when reality is more complex and long-term.

(I say this not really having a horse in this race, never having even been to the UK and only having been to Europe a few times).

1. https://theconversation.com/polling-history-40-years-of-brit...

Skepticism is a force, yes, but otherwise your claim looks very much like post-hoc reasoning. This is simply not the case.