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In a further sign of the party’s new willingness to engage on a subject it has largely avoided under Starmer, the Labour leader will set out a plan to try to reduce red tape over trade, professional qualifications and other issues.In the speech on Monday evening to the Centre for European Reform think-tank, Starmer was expected to rule out any major changes, for example on single market membership or reversing Brexit, saying such a move would simply reignite rows and cause division.

Sir Keir Starmer will today promise that a Labour government would not bring back EU freedom of movement as he attempts to draw a line under the party’s Brexit divisions. The Labour leader will deliver a speech at the Centre for European Reform think-tank this evening in which he will set out a five point plan to “Make Brexit Work”. He will say that under Labour, the UK would not rejoin the EU and nor would it join the bloc’s single market or customs union. And on migration, he will say: “We will not return to freedom of movement to create short term fixes.” 

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said the ministers’ statement “shows a hardening of the EU line on the protocol”. “The new German government is a few notches tougher on the British than its predecessor,” he said. “In recent years it has often been the French who have taken the hardest line among the 27 — but the joint statement shows they are not alone. EU governments now say that the arguments over the protocol are not just about Northern Ireland, they are about the UK’s international reputation as a country that respects the rule of law.”

According to Zach Meyers, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER), "if the French presidency gives up on an EU-wide directive to implement the minimum global corporate tax because of Hungary’s veto, then any alternative will be far less legally robust.""The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has already ruled that EU member states cannot stop corporates from taking advantage of lower tax rates available in other member states: when the UK was a member of the EU, it proposed to do this, and the regime was struck down."

The doppelgänger approach has been used extensively by John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform. His latest update, covering the period to the end of last year, was published earlier this month, and the results are striking.

John Springford, du groupe de réflexion Centre for European Reform, a comparé les statistiques britanniques à celles d’un groupe de vingt-deux pays développés. Il en conclut que depuis le troisième trimestre 2016 (juste après le référendum), la croissance britannique a été inférieure de 5,2 % à celle du groupe témoin, les investissements inférieurs de 13,7 %, le commerce de marchandises de 13,6 % et celui des services de 7,9 %. Cela ne signifie pas que l’économie britannique a stagné depuis 2016, mais simplement qu’elle a moins prospéré que celle des pays témoins.

This largely explains the delay for Serbia "as it is not in President Vucic's interests to enact reforms that EU membership requires, as these would undermine his patronage system and his hold on power," Luigi Scazzieri, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, told Euronews. 

Luigi Scazzieri, a senior fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said the war looked set to emerge as the prism through which other domestic political disputes will be viewed as next year’s general elections draw closer. “The war becomes this all-encompassing phenomenon that has all these hot button consequences in terms of energy, food security, migration and economic recession,” he said. “It’s becoming a very big issue that has divisions within parties as well as between them.”