Thread by @tconnellyRTE

Here's my latest on Brexit, having spoken to various officials this morning:
There's growing pessimism about a breakthrough this week, basically because London is still "negotiating with itself", or "test balloons are being floated above the Thames", as one diplomat put it

The negotiators are not back in Brussels yet, so member states can not be fully briefed, and the "tunnel" still holds its mysteries... However, there appear to be three fundamental points of contention...

London wants the UK-wide customs arrangement to be the one and only backstop, although it accepts there would have to be special add-ons for NI. In other words, a customs union will only deal with some of the controls, it won't deal with SPS and related checks...

This slide from A50 Task Force in May spells out what other checks are required, *even if* the UK is in a customs union with the EU. ec.europa.eu/commission/pub…

Dublin and the EU Task Force are still insisting on a Northern Ireland-specific backstop as a final safety net if the UK-wide customs arrangement doesn't work.

One Irish source says: "There’s no question of subordinating or dissolving the NI backstop. It must be legally operable, and it must apply unless and until [something else comes along]. There’s absolutely no change in our position, there’s no change in the EU’s position."

So these are two major points of contention: will the NI-specific backstop be replaced, or "dissolved" by a UK-wide customs backstop with regulatory bolt-ons for NI? Or will the NI-specific backstop, the "all weather" backstop, still have to feature in the text?

The big question is whether or not the UK insists on a time-limit or a "termination clause" for the UK-wide customs backstop. Essentially, the more London insists on a termination clause, the stronger the need for the NI-specific backstop to remain, according to one source.