Press

At the same time the PM needs to reduce the lengthy period between the moment she signs a final deal in Brussels and the moment she puts it to the Commons. “She needs to sign an agreement very close to the moment she has a meaningful vote,” says John Springford of the Centre for European Reform. “On the current timetable, if she were to land an agreement this week, there would be up to two months for backbench opponents and the Eurosceptic media to tear it apart.”

The Bank of England and some independent analysts, including the Centre for European Reform, have suggested that the Leave result has held back UK GDP growth by between 2 and 2.5 per cent relative to where it otherwise would have been due to lower household spending, resulting from the spike in inflation after the vote, and lower business investment due to Brexit-related uncertainty.

Financial Times research has shown that by the end of the first quarter, the UK economy was between 1 and 1.5 per cent smaller than it would have been without the Brexit vote, although some independent estimates, such as a recent report from the Centre for European Reform, suggest the hit could have been as large as 2.5 per cent.

In London vermutet man hinter Fosters lauter Ablehnung derweil Kalkül. „Meint sie ihr Nein ernst? Anfangs hatte die DUP auch eine Unterstützung der Minderheitsregierung abgelehnt und sich dann doch darauf eingelassen“, erinnert Sam Lowe daran, dass May Nordirland nach der Wahl kurzfristig umgerechnet 1,2 Milliarden Euro Sonderhilfen zusagte. „Nordirland ist in vielerlei Hinsicht nicht in Großbritannien integriert. Etwa in seiner kategorischen Ablehnung der rechtlich verbindlichen Homo-Ehe oder des Abtreibungsrechts. Das Beharren auf die Integrität des Territoriums birgt aber hohe Symbolik, und die ist wichtig für die DUP“, sagt der Handelsexperte vom Centre for European Reform.

The Centre for European Reform’s John Springford has taken the Born-led model a step further. The CER approach uses not just GDP, but also other attributes of 22 advanced economies — including the inflation rate, openness to trade, investment ratio and how well-educated the population is — to create a doppelganger U.K. that most closely matches the country’s economy before the referendum. Based on that methodology, the CER puts the cost of Brexit at 2.5 percent of GDP.

“The member states and the EU institutions want the UK out before the European Parliament elections in late May 2019 and the nomination of a new commission afterwards, or Britain would be obliged to take part. The EU has already agreed to redistribute 27 of Britain’s 73 seats in the European Parliament to other member states. France — one of the hardliners in the Brexit talks — is among the countries that are due to benefit from this redistribution. It is hard to imagine that Paris will be eager to give the UK more leeway.” (Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, senior research fellow and Beth Oppenheim, researcher at the Centre for European Reform).