What shape Brexit will take is still the question as the new year approaches.

In return for securing control of immigration as well as most of its money and laws, the U.K. will surrender most of its existing economic and trade ties, according to a new report by a group of academics.

“I’d put my mortgage on hard,” said Anand Menon, director of U.K. in a Changing Europe, an EU-funded research program based at King’s College London.

What is his reasoning? European leaders are unwilling to grant Britain any favors or encourage secession sentiment elsewhere and May wants to accommodate the pro-Brexit wing of her party.

The government will want to leave the tariff-free single market and likely the customs union too, predicts Angus Armstrong from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. With services like finance hopefully included, that would necessitate a new free-trade agreement.

Armstrong said that although the U.K. will allow some of its workers preferential entry in order to win some access to the single market and would pay the EU, free movement of labor would end.

Catherine Barnard, a professor of European law at the University of Cambridge said that Europeans are already “playing hardball” by refusing to discuss the split and future trading relationship in parallel.

Money will be a potent issue if the EU tries to hold Britain to its budget commitments through 2020, reckoned Iain Begg, a politics professor at the London School of Economics.

Challenging those who say a weakening of the economy or complaints from businesses will ultimately prompt both sides to soften their approach was Matthew Goodwin, a senior fellow at Chatham House. British voters would blame a lack of European flexibility for any fallout and so strengthen their resolve for a clean break, he predicted.

There is “little consistent evidence that people would vote any differently if the referendum was held again,” John Curtice, of the University of Strathclyde, said.

Consumers aren’t feeling that upbeat about 2017 either.

Data published on Friday showed that since July, the month after the referendum, the YouGov/Cebr consumer confidence index fell to its lowest level. Such sentiment about how people feel about their finances plunged to depths last seen two years ago.

“Looking ahead to 2017 there is a feeling that a slight slowdown is on the way,” said Scott Corfe, director at the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Prime Minister May’s refusal to give a running commentary on her Brexit strategy has also left Queen Elizabeth disappointed. She stuck to her public line that “Brexit means Brexit” rather than offering the monarch the private briefing she’d hoped for when May visited the Queen in Balmoral in September, the Times reports.

According to Nomura and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, investors aren’t braced for a hard Brexit.

While Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Gilles Moec said in a Bloomberg Television interview that there is a “bit of denial in the market”, Jordan Rochester, a currency strategist at Nomura, told clients in a report on Thursday that the market is “too complacent and optimistic.”

“It may be because market participants that were eligible to vote probably voted overwhelmingly to remain,” said Rochester.

“The market wants to hope that some sort of miracle is going to happen, some kind of soft Brexit is going to be on the menu,” said Moec.

(Adapted from Bloomberg)