Research

The governing liberal party led by Mark Rutte is standing at about 16% in the current poll of polls, as is Wilders’ party. Three others parties, including the Greens, hover around 11%. “A leftwing coalition – led by GroenLinks (Green Left) – could possibly be formed and include the Eurosceptic and hard-left Socialist party (SP) or even the fringe PvdD, an animal rights party, the respected Centre for European Reform has reported.

The warmer tone has been welcomed, says Ian Bond of the London-based Center for European Reform, who spoke to VOA via Skype. "He didn’t repeat the suggestion that it was obsolete and he did stress the importance of NATO. But underneath that he’s still talking in terms of NATO countries paying their bills, as though America is a kind of bodyguard service," Bond said.

The government has been criticised for asserting that it will be able to strike a free trade deal with the EU within two years. “Britain’s partners think that is bonkers,” Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said in an insightful report published recently about the problems the UK will face getting a Brexit deal. Grant went on: "The fact that [Theresa] May proclaimed that everything could be done in two years makes Britain’s partners worry that 10 Downing Street is not fully in touch with reality."

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said the prime minister might benefit from consulting a wider circle of people “including former permanent representatives to the EU” before finalising her Brexit strategy. “At the moment it seems to be a fairly small group of people involved in decision making, many of them with a Home Office background,” he said.

Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska of the Centre for European Reform says the European Commission has little room to maneuver and might lose this battle with Poland. “If the commission does not respond, it would face criticism from liberals in the European Parliament and it looks weak in the eyes of external actors; but, by interfering in this political conflict, the risks of antagonizing the Polish public is the last thing the commission would like to have because of growing euroscepticism.”

The big risk is that the eventual result will be good neither for Britain nor for the EU. In a new paper for the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, Charles Grant notes that this is because “both the UK and the 27 are placing politics and principles ahead of economically optimal outcomes.” Sadly, it was ever thus.