If the vote had been 52:48 the other way round, Remain would have regarded it as a 97% Consensus, and the UK population would not have been asked their opinion until the current batch of teenagers were within ten years of retirement.

stewgreen, having chosen to Leave, the EU now finds there are things to negotiate about.

Any chance we could renegotiate Maastricht, or Lisbon etc, or is it now too late? It could have made so much difference to the survival of the EU.

golf charlie
Tigranes is probably the first recorded monarch who shut his ears to bad news.Since then there have been many cases of leaders not believing what they are being told, Stalin ignored warnings of the German attack. Margaret Thatcher had many warnings of hostility to the Poll Tax, including history.

I'm sure you can add many more.

I have a memory that when Boris Johnson threw is hat in the ring on the side of of leave he said something along the lines of "The only way to get a better deal is to vote leave". Unfortunately Junckers doesn't like Britain or Cameron and particularly Farrage. Churchill said something about being magnanimous in victory, Farrage didn't manage that today, still playing to his demographic, not to make life easier for those negotiating Britain's exit. So I'd say Boris will be facing an uphill struggle on a very steep hill.