Brexit: No 10 startled by EU insistence that UK accept trade terms

Bloc's stance apparently taken as challenge to Boris Johnson's threat to walk out on talks

Downing Street reacted in dismay as Emmanuel Macron led EU leaders in warning Boris Johnson that he must swallow the bloc's conditions, in what appeared to be taken as a direct challenge to the British prime minister's threat to walk out on the talks.

At a summit in Brussels, the EU proposed a further two to three weeks" of negotiations but Europe's heads of state and government offered Johnson little succour, demanding that he alone needed to make the necessary moves to make an agreement possible".