Fishing with a golden hook

I can't speak for anybody else, but having had a few days to digest Boris Johnson's recent attempt to reach out to Remainers and set out a positive case for Brexit, I'm not convinced.

The Brexiteers' loud and aggressive campaign against freedom of movement for other Europeans won't, Johnson assures us, cause the Continentals to inconvenience UK nationals trying to exercise their freedom to move between jobs, cheap stag nights, or cultural attractions in any part of Europe that takes their fancy. And if you believe that one, Boris has a bridge he'd like to sell you...

I'm more convinced by the rhetoric of another lofty patrician, which our classically-educated Foreign Secretary would have done well to heed before he got himself, and the rest of the country, into this fix:

It was a principle of his that no campaign or battle should ever be fought unless more could clearly be gained by victory than lost by defeat; and he would compare those who took great risks in the hope of gaining some small advantage to a man who fishes with a golden hook, though aware that nothing he can catch will be valuable enough to justify its loss.

Sound, if platitudinous, advice from Augustus Caesar, (according to Suetonius). When every Brexit scenario modelled in the government's own assessments looks worse than the status quo, it seems to me that the Brexiteers are fishing with a golden hook.