This is Spectator Radio. If you'd like to subscribe to The Spectator, you can get 12 issues for £12

£12, as well as a £20 £20,000, Amazon Voucher. Just go to spectator.com.com. Hello and welcome to

Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Cindy U. and I'm joined by James Forsyth and

Katie Balls. So it's only a couple of days before the EU Council is supposed to meet where

they were supposed to be hammering out a Brexit deal. James, where are we at with the Brexit negotiations?

Well, we're already known more in our midnight podcast because Michelle Barnier has set a deadline

of midnight. Brussels time or Luxembourg

time so 11 p.m. our time for progress. So I think while there is still some progress being made,

I think there is a little bit less optimism as right of this moment, which is 12.01 or something

when there has been produced.. I think the EU are

basically trying to use the time pressure to say, right, if you want this deal, you need to sign up to

more concessions on this, more concessions on that. I mean, that is making things harder. Boros Johnson

met the DUP last night, and there are obviously limits to how much further he can go on the Northern Ireland only aspect of things without upsetting them. And then don't forget this

whole issue of level playing field requirements. One of the things that makes a deal between

on the Irish border simpler, the idea that UK-EU trade after Brexit would be tariff-free

and quota-free.

That was in the Theresa May political declaration.

But lots of people on the EU side are very keen to say that was in the Theresa May political declaration because it was clear that she was committed to all sorts of level playing field provisions.

Boris Johnson doesn't want to make those same commitments because he and just importantly and other

people on the more Euro-Sceptic, the Tory party feel that making those commitments kind of slightly

nullifies the point of Brexit. If the UK can't make its own decisions about what it wants

to do on social and environmental and all that stuff, then, you know, that limits the utility of Brexit.

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