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Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, believes there is little chance May will succeed in her renegotiation but expressed the hope MPs will then step in. "Parliament would bring down any government that pursued or tried to allow no deal," he said.

Even then, notes Sam Lowe, senior research fellow and trade policy expert at the Centre for European Reform, it wouldn’t be over. Another government may want to tweak what its predecessor agreed. He cites the experience of Switzerland, which has been locked in acrimonious negotiations with the EU for years. “One of the main things we should take from the Swiss is that it will never end,” he says. “When one negotiation finishes a new one begins.”

Or as Sam Lowe at the Centre for European Reform summarises, “we already know that this will be rejected by the EU, because there is little to distinguish it from the myriad ERG proposals we have seen over the past year.”
“While the EU is - and always has been - prepared to discuss technical solutions to the Irish border as part of the future relationship, they are not prepared to rely on something that does not yet exist as an insurance policy. The backstop actually needs to be a backstop.”
 

Charles Grant, a long-term Brussels hand who heads the Centre for European Reform, has a sobering message for Brexiters tonight. He warns that the EU will indeed refuse to reopen talks on the backstop and highlights the gulf between what is on offer in Brussels and the kind of concessions the Brexiters now think they can win. "Having spent much of this week in Brussels, I have no doubt that the EU will refuse to reopen the withdrawal agreement/Irish backstop. EU leaders are alarmed that UK pols remain so ignorant of the EU position and the realities of Brexit."

Brexit is already costing the UK’s public finances £17bn a year, according to a separate study released ahead of critical votes in parliament this week. The amount would be sufficient to pay 10,000 more police to patrol the streets and train nurses to fill every vacancy in England, and still leave enough to cover the UK’s current contribution to the EU’s budget. The research from the Centre for European Reform estimates the UK economy is 2.3 per cent smaller than it would have been had Britain voted to remain in the EU back in 2016.

“Britain’s decision to leave the EU damaged growth, largely thanks to higher inflation and lower business investment. The UK missed out on a broad-based upturn in growth among advanced economies in 2017 and early 2018. And the economic cost of the decision so far is sizeable, if not disastrous.” (John Springford, Centre for European Reform)

Meanwhile, a new report published by the Centre for European Reform on Sunday highlighted the damage the UK economy has already sustained as a result of the vote to leave.The CER said the economy was now 2.3 per cent smaller than it would have been if Britain had voted Remain, even after a recalculation that took account of the recent slowdown in Germany.

The UK’s better-than-expected economic growth last year prompted a pro-European think-tank to trim its cost estimate for voting for Brexit.The UK economy was 2.3 percent smaller in the third quarter than had the country voted in 2016 to remain in the European Union, according to the Centre for European Reform, a 0.2 percentage point cut from the prior three months. The estimate means a weekly hit of 320 million pounds ($422 million) to public finances, or 17 billion pounds a year, the group said.