UK’s Cake-And-Eat-It Brexit Routine Wears Thin With Barnier

It was hard not to conclude, watching David Davis and Michel Barnier during a tense joint press conference at the end of the third round of Brexit talks in Brussels, that these were two men – and two sides – largely talking past each other.

For the ever-upbeat Brexit secretary, “concrete progress” had been made – he listed some smaller, discrete areas to do with citizens' rights – and the UK was being “substantially more flexible and pragmatic” than the EU.