I don't like the increase schedule in XT, my hope is that XT is the catalyst to get Core team to agree on some sort of increase and we can reassess later once we see how other scaling solutions are progressing. Just because the network moves to 8MB blocks now doesn't mean that we're beholden to the every two years schedule built into XT now.
This is exactly my hope as well. I don't know about the others, but I refuse to believe that Gavin has become corrupt. I think he would have easily settled to 4MB block, just if there was consensus.
His XT move is a bluff as well in my opinion. If it works, great, we will have 8MB blocks. But it probably won't get 75% of the nodes on board. So when the XT starts approaching 35%-40%, core devs will start panicking and then the negotiation time will start. Then we will get some consensus and finish this drama.