Welcome to F.T. Politics, the Financial Times podcast on British politics.

I'm Sebastian Payne and in this week's episode we'll be discussing the EU summit in Brussels and why

Theresa May did not unlock the Brexit talks plus what Labour has been saying on Brexit

too. I'm delighted to be joined by Alex Barker, the F.T.'s Brussels Bureau Chief,

the former business secretary in EU Trade Commission Peter Manderson, Chief Political

Correspondent Jim Picard and political commentator Miranda Green. Thank you all for joining.

This was a big Brexit packet week for Theresa May.

The crucial EU Council Summit on Thursday and Friday was crucial for Britain.

Would this be the moment that talks had moved from the divorce

stage onto the future relationship? No. The UK Prime Minister received some nice words from

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the go-head was given for some

internal preparations to begin for trade talks hopefully in December but for the

UK and the EU they're still in deadlock so really what happens next?

Alex Bach can you just begin by giving us a background on this summit and why

Theresa May didn't get this nod that has been talked about so much in recent weeks?

Well basically behind this misjudgment on the UK side about what

they would be able to get from the Florence speech concession and they were hoping to be able to start a transition negotiation and bring together a divorce deal and transition deal and the EU had taken a much firmer position on the sequencing of these talks and they expected and that has played out

over the past couple of weeks in the backroom diplomacy.

What we saw today was the EU sticking by as fundamental positions but at the same time giving

Theresa May a degree of encouragement help in terms of the more positive tone they're

trying to adopt the signaling that they hope

this deal is going to be done in December and that this work they're going to be starting on the

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