In an opinion piece for The Times, Professor Philip Cowley argues that proportionally the Brexit rebellion beats the previous vote on the Iraq war. Professor Cowley wrote: "This wasn’t a minor piece of policy either. This was the central piece of government policy; if not quite the only thing the government is currently doing, it is not far off. And it went down like the Hindenburg. "It is a somewhat banal observation to make that, under normal circumstances, the prime minister would have resigned following such a defeat. But under normal circumstances, no party leader, knowing that such a stonking defeat was likely, would have pushed the issue to a vote.”