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.