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“The government forcing people to think about it now ultimately strengthens their hands,” said Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in London. “It means thought is put into why pursuing such an outcome is foolhardy.”

“The Commission is taking a hard line not because it wants to but because it’s got instructions from France and Germany to do so,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think tank in London. “The British should not assume that just by talking to Merkel and Macron things will get easier.”

Last week, Donald Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker surprised many people when they announced an agreement to seemingly avert the trade war that many people had been expecting. While Trump has hyped this as a major breakthrough, many people have been more sceptical. John Springford, the deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, kindly agreed to discuss the implications for the deal with us.
The success of the deal “is yet to be seen”, says Springford. After all, “it’s not an agreement in itself, just an agreement to start talking about talks”.

"He [Macron] hasn't convinced enough people that what he's doing is not just franco-francais, that he's not just pursuing a French agenda and dressing it up in European clothing," said Charles Grant, director of the London-based Centre for European Reform.

Charles Grant, from the Centre for European Reform, said: “The French have been the toughest on Brexit on a range of issues, including financial services and Galileo (the satellite-navigation system being created by the EU). They are doing this both to grab business and because they genuinely fear how well the Eurosceptic movement will do in the European elections next May, when the National Front could conceivably win more votes. So I think France needs to demonstrate that Brexit doesn’t pay.”

"The Tory party is fundamentally a eurosceptic party, and any Tory leader who would talk about a referendum would be killed [politically], because that would possibly lead to Brexit not happening," noted Charles Grant, from the Centre for European Reform, a London think tank.
He told EUobserver that the debate was happening now "because there is much more uncertainty on what will happen" at the end of the negotiations with the EU.
"But chances of a vote are extremely small," he said.

Sam Lowe, the trade and Brexit specialist at the Centre for European Reform is among the experts who have also lent credence to the idea. “You would create a Northern Ireland-specific backstop written into the Withdrawal Agreement which is unconditional,” he suggests, “and then combine it with an agreement for a potential all-UK Customs Union that supplements the Irish backstop, but remains conditional on a future agreement.”