What to make of this latest war of words between Britain and EU?

On one level it sounds quite serious. Theresa May badly needs a transition deal to be signed off next month or else businesses that have been waiting and watching developments could start implementing contingency plans for a damaging hard Brexit.

And from David Davis’s intemperate words yesterday to Michel Barnier’s riposte today it sounds like the two sides are very far from agreeing a deal.

But public utterances can be misleading. The EU side knows that Mrs May is under huge domestic political pressure not to agree to a transition deal which, in the words of the arch Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg, would turn Britain into a “vassal state”.

Equally it has no