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“I cannot think of another country which is so sceptical about its own armed forces as Germany,” says Sophia Besch, a European defence expert at the Centre for European Reform in London. “As an institution,” she adds, “the Bundeswehr is incredibly insecure.” Forthright attempts after the war to ensure Germany’s newly formed armed forces did not forget the Nazi era are embodied in the concept of a soldier as a “citizen in uniform”. Besch says German soldiers are not allowed to dress up like their British and American counterparts. “It is no accident that they resemble bus drivers,” she adds.

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said in November that if the UK leaves the single market then financial firms will lose their EU passporting rights. He claimed the UK cannot “cherry pick” at aspects of the single market and it will lose the benefits of the single market when it leaves the European Union. Speaking at a conference by the Centre for European Reform, Mr Barnier said: “On financial services, UK voices suggest that Brexit does not mean Brexit. Brexit means Brexit, everywhere.

“The plan for the Irish border doesn’t add up, and everyone knows that,” says Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European reform. “There will have to be a hard border of some sort.” The government, in that case, may have to come up with another fudge. “The British will take their promise not to establish a hard border in a vague way,” Mr. Grant told The World Weekly, “perhaps getting around it by saying they simply promised there would be no physical barriers, and so on.”

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said that as long as Britain's goals remained vague, competing forces in May's government could keep together. "But the real difficulties ahead lie when the British will ask for special system of regulatory alignment — they won't get it," he said.

"The government has to decide what to ask for in phase two, which is going to be very difficult in itself," said Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform. "The British government is going to find that whatever it asks for, the EU is going to be tough," he told AFP, adding: "I think there's going to be a massive crisis."