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BREXIT proposals set out in the Government's White Paper have zero chance of being accepted by the European Union in their current form, an economist with the Centre for European Reform think tank has warned. And senior research fellow Sam Lowe has suggested that the facilitated customs partnership idea set out in the document amounts to a "stalking horse" for the UK being part of a straightforward customs union.

The fall in migrant numbers in Italy has given the League party a political boost at home, says analyst Luigi Scazzieri of the Centre for European Reform. "The figures had already dropped very much under the previous government, due to a set of deals Italy had struck with Libya. Indeed, the arrivals had dropped very sharply. Now, of course, the policy of preventing NGO boats from docking has led to an even further decrease. But more than that, it's led to a very strong political win for the League, especially because other European countries have now been forced to take in some of the migrants arriving in Italy," Scazzieri told VOA.

Above all, there is a decision to be made between the current free movement of goods across Britain’s European borders (thus protecting both the peace settlement in Northern Ireland as well as manufacturing supply chains) or taking a maximalist view of “taking back control”. This choice is one that May has taken — in favour of the former. The white paper may not state this clearly — many political fig leaves remain in place — but as Sam Lowe rightly puts it, she is “inching our way towards Jersey”. That refers to the “Jersey model” of free movement of goods, with the UK being a full rule-taker as far as the production and trading of goods is concerned, which both Lowe and I have outlined.

John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, said the EU-Japan deal was a “rebuff to the US attempts to move away from the multilateral order to an order based on the principle of might being right”.

Today at Westminster, there is much debate over how much technical damage the Rees-Mogg amendments really did to Chequers. Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform is among a number of analysts who believe it was actually less harmful than Brexiters believe.

One commits the UK to leaving the EU’s VAT area after Brexit. Some experts say this all but guarantees a hard border in Ireland, undermining the whole purpose of May’s compromise Chequers plan. Charles Grant, the director of the Center for European Reform, said: “Unless we stay in EU’s VAT area, we cannot avoid a hard border.”

'But if May wants a deal, her red lines will have to shift. She has already agreed to be a rule taker and accepted a role for the European Court of Justice. She will also have to accept some sort of customs union, payments to the EU and something close to free movement of labour.'

And when even liberal voices such as Charles Grant of the London-based Centre for European Reform talks about it being unacceptable to having a deal with the EU like Norway because that would make the UK a “vassal state,” it goes to show one sad fact: The UK is still very long on imperial attitudes – and very short on realism.