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"If the UK government is making hormone-treated beef a red line in negotiations with Australia, the US and other trade partners, this will provide some protection for British cattle farmers, who are not allowed to give their own animals hormones," said John Springford, from the Centre for European Reform.

Zach Meyers, a research fellow with the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said the EU’s moves “are unlikely to work and could even dissuade countries from agreeing to the OECD package”.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said France will use its EU presidency in the first half of next year ahead of the French presidential elections to "promote its ideas of Europe".

“Behind the scenes the effect [from leaving the EU] is clearly showing up in the data,” said John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, citing his own research and figures from the Office for National Statistics, the London School of Economics and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He said the data showed the UK’s trade with the EU had fallen by a fifth because of Brexit. “Brexit has already made Britain poorer compared to a branch of history in which Britain remained in the EU — or indeed in the single market,” he added.

A more justifiable fear for British farmers, suggests Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, is that the deal becomes a model for bigger future ones with Latin America and the United States.

As Sam Lowe, an even-handed trade expert at the Centre for European Reform, recently wrote: “An Australian deal probably means the UK is going to offer the same to New Zealand. But beyond that – it is not so clear. Lots of countries will want to retain tariffs to shield their own food producers, and it is unlikely that the UK will offer them full tariff free access in the absence of reciprocity.”