After the latest Brexit talks ended without any agreement, yet another deadline has been declared - leaving journalists and commentators scouring the thesaurus for alternatives to “crunch” and "crucial" and politicians preparing the ground for there to be no deal.

Anything is possible of course but it does seem that we are heading for a messy divorce rather than an amicable separation in which both sides, like teenagers breaking up, could say that they can still be friends.

Certainty - or the lack of it - is, meanwhile, already leading to the kind of practical problems on the Brexit frontline that means some aspects of contingency plans are being unexpectedly put to the test sooner rather than later.

The gap between what the UK wants and what the EU wants seems to have grown rather than narrowed which suggests the talks over that three-course dinner (with that mischievous fishy menu) were hardly a success.

Perhaps that suits the Prime Minister, who can lay claim to going the distance in his efforts to get a deal by travelling to Brussels for last-ditch talks and by agreeing to a fresh bout of negotiations at the weekend - which is the final deadline. Or possibly not.

But there seems to be a mood of despondency rather than optimism and as each day passes without any resolution, the number of questions about what happens next grows, as does the length of the queues on the roads leading to the channel ports.

It would take a huge political salvage operation to rescue a deal at the weekend but the fear is that the next bout of “crunch” talks will be as unsuccessful as the last. And the one before that and the ones before that.

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