Theresa May is not one of those politicians who enjoys lengthy conversation over lunch. But her lunch on Monday with Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday will be one of the most important lunches in recent British history, I say in The Sun this morning.
Earlier in the week, there was a growing confidence in Whitehall that the lunch would go well, that Juncker would throw his weight behind ‘sufficient progress’ and the UK would formally get there at the December EU Council. But there has been an outbreak of the jitters in the last day or so. I am informed that we are a ‘million miles from this being a done deal’.
The reasons for this skittishness is, as one source explains, that the government is ‘mindful of the lesson of October where we were burnt’. Inside Downing Street, they are insistent that they were told before that Council if they said various things about the money that would be enough to move the talks on to trade.
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