A moment will come at the end of June when the European Union and Britain will hold a virtual high-level meeting to decide whether enough progress has been made to meet their agreed deadline for a post-Brexit trade relationship.
Under the UK withdrawal agreement, both sides currently have until December 31 this year to negotiate a deal and establish new rules governing future co-operation. However, the signs, are not good, and if Britain cannot obtain what it wants, it may decide to walk away.
In recent months it has become clear that the UK and EU have adopted quite different and so far hard to reconcile approaches to the negotiations, with both sides disagreeing fundamentally about what they are trying to achieve.
