Clearly, as laid out, this can't happen. Which raises the more interesting question - what, actually, has Brown heard?

If we assume he hasn't done a Cummings and just made this up from scratch - which I do, he's better than that - this must presumably be a Chinese Whispered, garbled version of something people are saying. So who, and what?

I can think of two possibilities:

1 - there's a lot of vague chatter from MEPs, and Brown's mistaken breadth of talk for some kind of critical mass gathering behind an as yet unspecified proposal. Possible, though I think he's smarter than that.

2 - there's more specific discussion around the mechanics of unilaterally offering the UK instant, temporary reaccession, creating effectively the same window as an extension would for a new government to apply for a delay, eg to run a second referendum.