I'm delighted to welcome five very eminent panelists tonight.

Firstly, Juliet Samuel from the Telegraph will kick off.

I will just say one thing about Juliet's columns.

One of the problems with the media's coverage of the Brexit negotiations,

an awful lot of journalists based in London don't travel and talk to people in the EU

and get that side of the story too.

Well, Juliet's an exception.

She was in Brussels recently talking to the EU negotiators. She hears it from both sides of the negotiation,

which is why I always read her columns. Julie, over to you. Do give us an overview. How does it look

from your own point of view? So I think it's safe to say that the point we're starting from right now is that the negotiations are not going that well.

And we're at the point where the EU is going to decide soon whether to progress talks onto the next stage and talk about a trade deal or whether that will be delayed

until Christmas or possibly further. And it's very clear that that is a political decision.

The EU is framing this as a legal decision and a legal framework. But in fact, we all know that

this is a political procedure.

So the EU needs to feel that it has gotten some sort of PR victory that will enable it

to say that there has been sufficient progress, because we all know that it's impossible

to actually sort out the issues like the Northern Irish border before there will be a final deal,

which determines what our trading relationship will be.

And Britain has basically decided to go along with this ordering, rightly in my view,

in order to avoid a lot of arguing about procedure.

But where I'm going to start is basically with what the government has done badly or well so far in the negotiations and then what it should do going forward.

So I'll start with the bad news, which I'm afraid is a slightly longer list than the good news.

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