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Sam Lowe, a leading trade expert at the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, says Brexiters’ objections are overstated, since there are far more barriers to trade than tariffs, which in many cases are already low. “Being in a customs union would place no constraints on the UK’s ability to negotiate in the areas of services, intellectual property, public procurement, data and regulatory barriers to trade in goods,” he says.

“The transatlantic relationship is changing: it’s a transition that started before Trump’s presidency and will continue after,” says Sophia Besch, a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. “His approach that the US gains nothing from alliances is something that is specific to him. But the shift of interest to Asia and a general reluctance to get involved militarily because of the experience of forever wars has shaped the thinking of the next generation of American leaders.”

Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, is confident that if the crunch comes EU member-states will strike bilateral side-deals with the UK to cushion the blow. “For now the Commission is taking a strong line, but EU member-states will have to look after their own interests”, he predicts.

At the weekend the Centre for European Reform released calculations suggesting Britain’s economy is 2.5% smaller than it would have been if voters had chosen to stay in the EU in 2016, resulting in an extra £19bn of government borrowing a year.

The UK economy is 2.5 per cent smaller than it would have been had the country voted to remain in the European Union, with a knock-on effect to public finances of £360 million (Dh1.7 billion) a week, according to the Centre for European Reform.The cost exceeds the false assertion by the "leave" campaign in the run-up to the Brexit referendum in 2016 that being a member of the EU costs the country £350m a week to support the National Health Service – the government agency providing healthcare services in the UK.

“There is concern about the [Huawei communications infrastructure] 5G issue. At the same time German industry has a somewhat divided position in that they don’t want the government interfering and deciding to brand things as nationally critical technology meaning that they can’t then sell things very easily,” says Ian Bond, of the Centre for European Reform.

Christian Odendahl, a Berlin-based economist at the Centre for European Reform, says that because the tools, both fiscal and monetary, currently being used are limited, it’s time to invent new ones. He suggests, for example, that the central bank break free of its lone and strict mandate—an inflation target at “below but close to 2%—and deliberately overshoot, which would legitimize even more monetary stimulus.