Well, the facts are that Gavin literally did just that; an alternative, hardforked client with a 20 MB block limit, and anyone from the core deve team that didn't like that could watch while he lobbies miners, services and merchants to accept the new client. That was what he said, he has not retracted it, nor confessed the ulterior motive you are affording him. Those are the facts, are they not?
Sure facts are facts, while speculation is another thing entirely.
Gaving did something and community at large react to his stimulation.
And I prise community reactions, in particular core devs reaction.
From what I can see we're moving forward in the process of finding
a way to make bitcoin scale.
Just to make an example in the beginning of the debate a lot of devs
(core or not) did not acknowledge that a block size increase was needed
Now almost everybody, modulo mircea popescu and mpex group, agree
about some sort of increase.
This is a result of Gavin action, and I say a positive one.
Other less measurable, but nonetheless actual result, is the increasing pace
at which "layer 2" solutions are developed (Lightning Network, Sidechain, Payment
channels implementations etc etc).
Speculating about what? I am sorry, but the only speculative statement in the above posts between you and I is the part where you assume Gavin was just acting, just doing this for the effect it would have. Again, that's not what he said, he has not retracted what he did say to confess his secret altruistic plan to get everyone talking, nor confessed the ulterior motive you are affording him.