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Ian Bond, a former British diplomat in Moscow who is now director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform in London, said Russia’s often implausible denials had made it “like the boy who cried wolf.” “If you keep putting forward crazy conspiracy theories, eventually people are going to ask whether what you are saying is just another crazy Russian denial,” he said.

There are significant costs, administrative and legal, for businesses that have to prove the origin of goods. In some cases, that could even mean that it's cheaper just to pay a low tariff than to go through the bureaucracy involved in getting an exemption. "There are steps that can be taken to mitigate the costs," says Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform. "But outside the customs union you cannot eliminate those extra costs entirely."

“If Mrs May had not been at the table yesterday, she would have been relying entirely on the leaders of France, Germany and others to make her points [about the Skripal case] for her,” says Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank.“That would have been a pretty tough thing to do. The French and Germans are obviously concerned about what the Russians are doing. But this isn’t their fight.”

Member-states are taking back control of the Brussels machinery from the European Commission, argues Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska at the Centre for European Reform: "The outcome of the leaders’ discussions chimes with the original British vision for the EU, whereby the member-states have a strong voice in EU decision-making, and keep the European Parliament and the Commission at arm’s length. But the irony of Brexit is that the EU is becoming more British just as the UK is leaving the EU."

Though David Davis, Britain’s Brexit secretary, trumpeted on Monday the fact that Britain would be able to negotiate and sign non-European trade deals during the transition, if not to implement them, experts were unimpressed. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a research institute, describes that as a “token,” since prospects of such talks being completed during the transition period were remote. “I don’t think that’s a real concession,” he said.

As Sam Lowe at the Centre for European Reform puts it, since Mrs May is determined to leave the customs union and single market, businesses that deal with the EU are “far from sanguine”. Supply chains will still need to be reconfigured in short order; new business processes put in place and the inevitable coming frictions at the EU border will require adjustments. “While the cliff edge has been pushed back,” he says. “It is still very much on the horizon.”

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said it was likely the UK would get an accord on the terms of the transition at this week’s EU summit. “Only one thing could prevent a deal: if the British cannot convince Dublin they are making progress towards achieving a barrier-free Irish border, the Irish could veto a transition,” he said. “But that seems unlikely.”

“Rules of origin are going to be one post-Brexit additional cost to business that no amount of innovative thinking or new and unusual technology can stave off,” Sam Lowe, a trade expert at the Centre for European Reform told me. The CBI agrees. “For the 135,000 businesses who currently only export to the EU,” it writes in a new report, rules of origin will “be a huge and unprecedented administrative challenge.”

“Davis, with his breezy self-confidence, sometimes finds it hard to connect with Barnier, who sticks firmly to the rigorous principles of the EU’s legal order,” says Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform.