Former London mayor Boris Johnson should be on cloud nine. Having spearheaded the successful Brexit campaign, he’s emerging as the likely successor to Conservative prime minister David Cameron, who opposed the movement to leave the European Union.

On the steps of the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street, Cameron announced immediately after the vote results that he will step down in October, and said that ”fresh leadership” is needed. He also said he would leave it to the next prime minister to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which would start the two-year process of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.

But rather than portraying Cameron as the defeated and Johnson as the victor, a post in the Guardian’s comments section lays out a scenario in which Johnson’s predicament looks far worse.

“He has been out-maneouvered and check-mated,” the comment, by a prolific and anti-Brexit commenter identified as Teebs, says. “If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over – Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession … broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this.”

The commenter even goes so far as to say the Brexit campaigners themselves have no intention of carrying out the Article 50 process: “All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne.”

The theory seems to have convinced many with its interpretation of the two men’s demeanors and its theories about each’s endgame, and it is being shared widely online:

Here’s the full text of Teebs’ statement: