The EU are getting frustrated by the absence of any UK position papers, especially on the Brexit bill and they are threatening privately to delay the next round of talks by two months (HERE). In the report what caught my eye was this statement from an EU official:
"Barnier expressed concerns that sufficient progress in October looked difficult now. Mainly because Britain has no position on finances, but also because they don't have positions on other issues as well," a second EU official said.
The vote was over a year ago and it seems beyond belief that we do not yet have positions on the key issues with almost four months of the negotiating period gone. It looks as if Mrs May was far too optimistic when setting the end of March date for triggering Article 50 and we should have waited until we were ready.
However, the threat from the EU did not stop The Telegraph (HERE) from printing an article with the headline, "The EU is struggling to compromise over Brexit as it doesn't actually know what it wants out of it". One wonders what goes off inside The Torygraph sometimes. This must appear to the writer like the first negotiation in history where both sides get round the table to discover that neither knows what they actually want to negotiate. It's like a skit from Monty Python - you couldn't make it up.
I'm afraid from The Telegraph it's a combination of chutzpah and whistling in the dark to keep their spirits up.
