Charlie Elphicke: How to get Ready on Day One for Brexit – deal or no deal

The Prime Minister is right to be optimistic about our future relationship with the EU, but we must be ready for every eventuality.

Ashley Fox: The UK’s negotiators have the freedom to innovate and compromise, but Barnier’s hands are tied

The famous photo of the EU’s negotiator sitting with a pile of papers was misinterpreted. Those were the order that limit his scope.

Henry Newman: Of the Government’s two proposals for post-Brexit customs policy, only one is workable

The policy paper provides welcome clarity, but it’s time the Treasury gave up on the fiendishly difficult model it prefers.

Brexit. Maximum media scrutiny for May – very little for Brussels, Paris or Berlin

The British media is busy taking revenge on the Prime Minister, while neglecting continental politics.

Christopher Howarth: We are not supplicants in this negotiation. We have something the EU needs: money.

For both sides, this is a new kind of deal-making. Although Britain is still a member, this is not an internal negotiation in which the UK can be outgunned and outvoted:

Syed Kamall: Secretive Verhofstadt, constructive Barnier

Tusk’s statement last week responding to Article 50 struck the right tone. It was measured, matter of fact and avoided confrontation.

Why do we keep mentioning the war?

Our folk memory of World War Two is based as much in cinematic fiction as in real history. But that’s pretty hard to explain to our European neighbours.

Daniel Hannan: May’s Brexit vision is Churchill’s vision of Britain and Europe

We will be an ally, not a member, of the United States of Europe.

In Brussels, a clash is coming between dogma and pragmatism

We shouldn’t take the ideological pronouncements of the Commission as being set in stone. The member states may yet have their say.

Matthew Ellery: EU Associate Citizenship for Britons – a trap to lure the unwary

A reply to Mark Wallace’s article of a week ago today.

Leavers should welcome Brussels’s offer of opt-in EU citizenship for Brits

I won’t be taking it up. But if others do, it would weaken their willingness to try to block Brexit.

Daniel Hannan: We will get a good deal – because rational self-interest will overcome the Eurocrats’ fury

While Tusk and Barnier fume, the member states sound rather more emollient.

Syed Kamall: The EU elites still don’t get it

The EPP Christian Democrat group now believes that the Union can reconnect to people by giving richer middle class kids free summer holidays backpacking around the Dordogne.

Profile: Guy Verhofstadt – not the devil, but an imp (and a European federalist)

The true believer whose appointment to represent the European Parliament in the Brexit negotiations is “an act of war”.