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Brexit is already costing the public purse £500m a week, new research has found – a stark contrast to the £350m “dividend” promised by the Leave campaign. The Centre for European Reform’s analysis also suggests that the government’s austerity drive would be on the way to completion had Britain voted to stay in the European Union.

As Sam Lowe, a trade expert at the Centre for European Reform, has written: "The UK is an intermediary manufacturer - one that imports to export - and the EU is, and will remain, the UK's most important trading partner". Reducing border friction is a reasonable ambition.
But one of Labour's six tests is that Labour says it must deliver the "exact same benefits" as we currently have as members of the single market and customs union. This proposal would not do that.
 

Sam Lowe and John Springford at the Centre for European Reform plot the path to a Brexit fudge on the Northern Irish backstop — but warn it could drag on until 2019: “The negotiations could well run into the New Year. If the UK is to capitulate, as the EU expects it will, it is difficult to see it happening while there is still time to negotiate further.”

“A long-term customs union would reduce the number of checks necessary between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, since tariffs and rules of origin would not be an issue. And, as tempers cool over time — and if the wave of populism that currently threatens the EU recedes — it may be possible to bolt on shared rules and standards to the customs union, so that it gets closer to membership of the single market in goods. This strategy would amount to a ‘de-dramatisation’ of Chequers in order to make it more palatable to the EU, but it would not remove the need to agree a backstop.” (Sam Lowe and John Springford of the Centre for European Reform)

The Treasury forecast might sound drastic, but according to Sam Lowe, the trade policy expert at the Centre for European Reform think-tank, it looks reasonable when set against the possible upside of trade deals. The EU’s own calculations of the benefits of the now stalled EU-US transatlantic trade deal or “TTIP” were only an uplift of 0.5 per cent of EU GDP by 2027.

Analyst Camino Mortera-Martinez of the Centre for European Reform says Italy’s approach has been met with a conflicted response in Brussels. “I think some in Brussels are actually happy that Salvini and others are bringing out these topics on the so-called ‘taxi service’ or the shuttle service, and the pull factor that some in government think that the NGOs have in the increase of migrants coming to Europe. I think there is a lot of hypocrisy in this discourse," Mortera-Martinez added.

Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, a research institution, said: "I don’t see any EU split right now, I really don't. I’ve been looking for a pro-British lobby in the Council for six months now, and I can't find one."