What the papers say: A Brexit transition deadline is essential

Theresa May and her Cabinet are meeting at Chequers today to try and finally thrash out an agreement on what kind of Brexit the Tories want. Six hundred days have now passed since the referendum vote, and ministerial discussions on Brexit have so far failed to deliver any ‘white smoke’ moments, says the Daily Telegraph. The problem for the Government until now, says the paper, is that the clear aims Theresa May set out in her Lancaster House speech were ‘bisected’ by a general election which undermined her statement of intent. We were promised a ‘tough negotiation’; but in the wake of the Tories’ lost majority, Brexit talks have, instead, ‘turned into something resembling a capitulation’. In the first round of discussions, Britain ‘gave the EU side much of what it wanted’ – on the Brexit divorce bill, Ireland and the rights of EU citizens. It is time to finally put up a fight, suggests the Telegraph, which argues that the £39bn Britain has agreed to pay the EU is a ‘powerful bargaining counter and should be used against the EU’.