Just to be clear, a mob of EU officials were already booked on eurostar to come to London tomorrow for technical talks on the free trade deal long before the phone call this pm between @DavidGHFrost and @MichelBarnier. So @michaelgove's billing of the intensification...

of the talks - rather than their collapse - as a great victory for @BorisJohnson is classic Govian spin. That intensification was inevitable. Johnson's "walk out" was theatre. The real deadline for the talks is 15 November, because any later and ratification becomes impossible...

The point is that there has been much more progress towards agreement than @michaelgove is prepared to concede. In the EU, they still expect and hope for a deal. And if there isn't one, it's because - they think - the PM will have worked out that there will be massive...

disruption to UK trade and a hit to the economy even if there is a deal, and it may be better politics for Johnson to blame the EU for that economic damage rather than concede that leaving the single market was always going to bring costs.