This is LBC from Global, leading Britain's conversation with James O'Brien.

Three minutes after ten, a very good morning indeed to you.

It is Tuesday the 27th of August and the clock continues to tick.

You may be surprised alone as I return from a two-week sojourn in many major European cities.

There's part of me that would quite like never to talk about Brexit again.

I would now like to be looking at it in the rearview mirror and working out whether or not

or how perhaps we progress.

But we can't.

The sense of urgency increases.

And the latest development and perhaps

a perspective of a fortnight's freedom is helpful to this position. Everything's changed again.

Close your eyes for two weeks. And you go from, well, no deal is a million to one chance to

it's now probably the most likely outcome.

And you go in the space of two weeks from, we will not be negotiating with anybody

until they have comprehensively and completely removed the British backstop in Ireland to tomorrow.

Boris Johnson's negotiator heading off to Brussels to negotiate with those people we weren't going to negotiate with until that backstop which hasn't been removed had got removed.

Some possible optimism if you read some corners of the British media.

I can tell you I don't have the language to read newspapers while I'm abroad, but I have the odd conversation.

Usually, you'll snigger at this, a gondolier.

A gondolier asked me about Brexit in Venice a couple of days ago, but with a sort of, I don't

know quite what the word is, it'd be a bit like sort of as if we'd elected the Chuckle Brothers

to be Prime Minister and Downing street god rest the the soul of

...