Brexit – grinding towards a gridlock

The Brexit negotiations are following the standard EU script of doom, disaster, never-going-to-agree. So it’s tempting to see this week’s impasse ‘as the usual diplomatic dancing in the darkness before dawn breaks on a deal’, in the words of Tim Shipman of The Times. Yet the Tory true-believer insiders appear to be sanguine about the prospect of a no-deal, with Michael Gove evidently spending the bulk of his time preparing for just such.
Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator,