Research

Improve the digital skills of Britons, more than “10m [of whom]s cannot send an email or shop online … universal digital literacy will be as important in this century as traditional literacy was 150 years ago”. (This echoes — or should echo for those who listen — Simon Tilford’s recent point that the UK lags behind badly behind even on traditional literacy.)

"To his credit, his rough and direct manner sometimes allows him to communicate with voters outside the Brussels bubble,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform. “But his uncompromising commitment to ‘more Europe’ on the traditional model has done nothing to reassure more EU-sceptic voters that the union is able or willing to engage in fundamental reform.”

Luigi Scazzieri, a fellow at CER, said that “Italy’s seems to be lined up as the next domino to fall to populism” in the referendum next week. In an opinion piece in Prospect magazine, he wrote: “The impact of a “No” vote on Italy’s political stability is likely to be contained. “Renzi’s resignation would not automatically trigger new elections. The Italian president Sergio Mattarella would first explore options for a new government.”

 Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform (CER), said that an Italian referendum on the eurozone would lead to considerable instability in Europe. Mr Tilford said: “The act of calling that referendum would precipitate a crisis in Europe. It would embolden populist and anti-Europe parties elsewhere.”  

Charles Grant, of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said in a report that the EU was showing “surprising” unity on its red lines for Britain’s departure and was preparing for a hard Brexit that would leave the UK outside the single market. Grant said government pronouncements since October had contributed to “an erosion of the goodwill that EU leaders feel towards the UK. They reckon that UK politics is being driven by emotion rather than reason and that there is not much they can do to prevent a hard Brexit”.

As Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform writes in a comprehensive analysis on Tuesday, EU officials "insist that during the transition the UK would have to accept free movement and European Court of Justice rulings. They know that this may be politically unacceptable for May."

As Simon Tilford of the Centre for European Reform points out, the US negotiators may well demand American pharmaceutical giants be given the freedom to undermine the monopoly drug-buying power of the NHS, or to prise open the British agricultural market, in its entirety, to dominant US producers.