The EU is preparing for a delay to Brexit of at least a year, senior officials and diplomats have said.

On Monday morning Martin Selmayr, the secretary general of the European Commission, was in mid-flow briefing EU ambassadors on how efforts over the weekend to get legally binding assurances on the Irish backstop had ground to a halt.

Ex-minister’s claim about EU boast over Brexit resurfaces in pro-unionist campaign video. / The European commission has described a claim made by the Conservative leadership hopeful Dominic Raab about a key EU official’s views on Brexit as “fake, fraudulent and pure disinformation” after it was spread in an election campaign video.

Boris Johnson viewed as Trump-like figure while Dominic Raab accused of ‘making things up’. / The EU has been on a Brexit break since the UK secured a six-month delay to its departure. With Theresa May soon to leave 10 Downing Street, Brussels is tuning in to the Westminster drama of the Tory leadership race – with both amazement and exasperation.

‘Perhaps I am being a bit harsh, but it’s about time we became a bit harsh,’ says Frans Timmermans.

The course of Brexit was set in the hours and days after the 2016 referendum. / It was at 6:22 a.m. on June 24, 2016 — 59 minutes before the official tally was unveiled — that the European Council sent its first “lines to take” to the national governments that make up the EU.