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Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said the deal should be judged on its strategic aims. “The benefits of this deal are less about the economics, which are negligible and more about the signal it sends about the UK’s intentions in the region, and as a stepping stone towards a big push for CPTPP accession next year.”

Industry consolidation is under way in Europe, with half of gig earnings stemming from the five biggest platforms, according to the Centre for European Reform. Wage inflation could accelerate the process by forcing weaker competitors out. If so, expect more protests from gig workers. The pressure for politicians to intervene will rise.

Para Camino Mortera, investigadora del Centre for European Reform, con sede en Londres, el culpable es el Brexit. “Es una combinación desafortunada entre el Brexit y la pandemia, pero si tuviera que escoger un porcentaje diría que es 70% y 30%. Esto es bastante comprobable cuando uno compara la situación en el Reino Unido con la del resto de Europa”, dice Mortera a EL UNIVERSAL.

“I think the situation that people in Italy are facing at the moment is basically a choice of Italy to go down this route, and not the choice of the European Union,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, a lawyer researching the Green Pass and freedom of movement at the Centre for European Reform in Brussels.

“The root of the problem, in a way, is the very bad state of the British-French relationship,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank. “It is so bad that it makes the French quite unwilling to help the British at all on Brexit issues. And the French of course are very influential on the EU institutions.” Grant argued that if the UK “started to get serious about diplomacy” and tried to “behave better and make some friends in Europe, then there would be a threat to unity because not everybody would want to follow the hard line that the French are taking.”

Over at a fringe meeting held by the Centre for European Reform, business minister Greg Hands proffered an interesting theory on why we will probably never rejoin the EU. By the time of the next election, he argued, we will have joined the Pacific free trade zone CPTPP and have trade deals with Australia, New Zealand and potentially India and maybe even the US (keep dreaming). “It’s very difficult to see how either rejoining the EU, the customs union or the single market would be compatible,” he said. This assumes, of course, that all of the deals will result in large new trade flows.

O economista do Centre for European Reform Christian Odendahl fazia uma comparação entre os caminhos dos conservadores, por um lado, e dos participantes nas conversações para uma coligação, por outro. “As conversações ‘semáforo’ entre o SPD, Verdes e FDP estão a correr sem percalços, embora ainda haja grandes diferenças a colmatar.

Christian Odendahl from the Centre for European Reform says a "traffic light" coalition of Greens and Liberals under Mr Scholz could agree on a “€500bn climate transition fund” for public and private investment that finesses German debt curbs and is anchored on Mittelstand family firms. This in turn could be the model for softer EU rules exempting green investment from spending caps.