It is not going to be an eleventh hour drama, more like a last minute scramble, if the agonisingly long drawn out Brexit negotiations are to end in a deal.
After a dramatic dash to Brussels and a tete a tete a tete, far from romantic dinner, with the EU chief, Ursula von der Leyen our prime minister Johnson had nothing to say.
But Mrs von der Leyen did: ‘very large gaps remain’.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s verdict: ‘we are still very far apart’, adding that it was very unlikely that the negotiations would go beyond Sunday’.
After years of wrangling, the prospect of a deal seems to be dangling by a thread.
A walkaway, with each side blaming the other, is more than ever likely, leaving Britain to face the still dangerous pandemic and an even worse economic plight.
How did it come to this? Both sides have known from the outset what the main issues were - the EU’s determination not to allow the loss of one member to weaken the while structure and Britain to pursue its dream of being independent, “Great’,again.
Two of the essential areas to resolve were free movement of trade and, what might be called the red herring, fishing rights. And they are still unresolved.
So, with days to go before a probable final break, Boris Johnson may find another of his promises, an “oven ready deal", burnt to a cinder.
He will, of course, blame those impossible Europeans he used to write so scathingly, and deliberately falsely, about when he was a newspaper man. He was sacked from that job.
So, will Britain have to find the path to ‘Greatness’ again or will our hapless prime minister produce a Houdini like last minute miracle?
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