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"People find ways around barriers," says Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think-tank. "Unless you start making them particularly inhumane, people are going to find other ways of getting through the system."

On no issue is this state of limbo more dangerous than migration. With civil wars still raging in the Middle East, any number of sparks could see the crisis flare up again with startling intensity. “There is a sense of calm before the storm,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, a research fellow and expert on free movement at the Centre of European Reform, a think-tank. As it stands, she told TWW, the bloc would be ill-equipped to withstand such an eventuality. The current solutions, though hard-fought, are sticking plasters; the serious treatment is yet to come.

In Britain, just setting out on an uncertain path outside the European Union, the "special relationship" between London and Washington is more important than ever, suggests Ian Bond, foreign policy analyst at the Centre for European Reform in London.

As Christian Odendahl, an economist with the Centre for European Reform in London, points out, a bailout with taxpayers’ money would give AfD yet another stick with which to beat her, on top of her bailouts of feckless Mediterranean types and her handling of the migrant crisis.

Britain has not been one of Europe’s economic stars over the past 15 years and Brexit is set to exacerbate its underlying weaknesses, writes Simon Tilford of the Centre for European Reform.

Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said that if Britain better understood the thinking of EU governments and businesses, it could secure a deal allowing tariff-free trade in goods with Europe. If it didn't, the two-year period between notifying Brussels of its intention to leave, and membership expiring, could pass without any deal at all, he said. "If the UK wants controls on labour movement from the EU it will have to concede membership of the EU's single market for services. I think that's obvious." 
 

The Centre for European Reform counts six interlocking negotiations for the UK government to contemplate: legal exit from the EU, the ultimate trading relationship, an interim arrangement between the two, joining the World Trade Organisation, trade agreements with 53 countries to replace existing EU deals, and co-operation on European security and defence.