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Luigi Scazzieri, a specialist in EU-Italy relations at the Centre for European Reform, said Salvini’s remarks were clearly “trying to deflect all kinds of responsibility”, but may strike a chord with Italian voters weary of austerity. “The commission is approaching this as a technicality. Salvini is making a broader political point, which will resonate much more with Italians,” Scazzieri said.

Supporters of the Jersey model, which was proposed by the Centre for European Reform think-tank earlier this year, say that it would mean border checks would not need to be applied to the land border with Ireland – a key Brexit issue.

European leaders would not want Britain to benefit overall by leaving their club –and the price they want it to pay is becoming clear. The Centre for European Reform's trade wonk Sam Lowe tells me that the White Paper (which fleshed out Mrs May’s Chequers plan) "almost gets to Jersey", but that Mrs May would be expected to "accept that potential future divergence is not on the table" over goods.

Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, another think-tank, said such efforts had yet to bear fruit. “We know very well what Corbyn is against on trade but not much about what he has to replace it with,” he added.

Brexiteers may call this Project Fear 2.0, but the evidence is against them. Market confidence would suffer. John Springford of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, says a no-deal Brexit would trigger both a recession and a run on the pound. No deal is not a serious option, even if today’s febrile politics pretends it is.

Last week, Donald Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker surprised many people when they announced an agreement to seemingly avert the trade war that many people had been expecting. While Trump has hyped this as a major breakthrough, many people have been more sceptical. John Springford, the deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, kindly agreed to discuss the implications for the deal with us.
The success of the deal “is yet to be seen”, says Springford. After all, “it’s not an agreement in itself, just an agreement to start talking about talks”.

"What we've seen in the last few years — really the sort of tragic and kind of embarrassing stories about the state of the Bundeswehr — that is certainly sinking in, and Germans are now supporting more defense spending than they have in the past," Sophia Besch, a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said on a recent edition of the Center for a New American Security's Brussels Sprouts podcast. 

Charles Grant, from the Centre for European Reform, said: “The French have been the toughest on Brexit on a range of issues, including financial services and Galileo (the satellite-navigation system being created by the EU). They are doing this both to grab business and because they genuinely fear how well the Eurosceptic movement will do in the European elections next May, when the National Front could conceivably win more votes. So I think France needs to demonstrate that Brexit doesn’t pay.”

But I am struck by how some of the best informed, most pro-European British experts, such as Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, have begun to argue that the EU 27 side is being too rigid, too exacting, too punitive in its approach.