Defiant Theresa tells European leaders: The ball is in your court

THERESA May will today tell EU leaders the ‘ball is in their court’ as she warns Britain will not make any more concessions in Brexit negotiations until they agree to start trade talks.

The PM will tell MPs: ‘A new, deep and special partnership between a sovereign UK and a strong and successful European Union is our ambition and our offer to our European friends.

‘Achieving that partnership will require leadership and flexibility, not just from us but from our friends, the 27 nations of the EU. And as we look forward to the next stage, the ball is in their court. By approaching these negotiations in a constructive way, we can prove the doomsayers wrong.’

It was claimed yesterday that Chancellor Philip Hammond was ready to sanction spending in the New Year to prepare for Britain needing to apply World Trade Organisation tariffs to goods to and from the EU if talks stall.

A source told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘Billions will be unlocked in the New Year if progress has not been made.’

EU leaders will meet on October 19 to decide whether trade talks can begin.

STRANGE days when the Conservative Party conference was – with the honourable exception of an upbeat Ruth Davidson – like a losers’ wake, even though it won the election.

Similarly, the Labour conference was like a winners’ party, despite the voters’ rejection of Jeremy Corbyn’s ruinous policies. And now the SNP is gathered in Glasgow, parading its own disconnect from reality.

Despite Scots by her own admission being scunnered with big votes, Nicola Sturgeon is yet again raising the spectre of another independence referendum, possibly as soon as next year.

Of course she has to throw her restive party, clamouring for independence, a bone lest it turn on her. But the damage the SNP is doing to business confidence and the public mood with this constant agitation is a serious matter.

Only one in five voters is convinced by the SNP’s economic case for tearing Scotland out of the UK.

Polls also show support for independence stalled and Miss Sturgeon’s hope that Brexit would send a wave of Europhile Scots her way has proved forlorn.

Indeed, very many of the faithful gathered in Glasgow for the conference see no point wresting power from London only to hand it to Brussels.

And as Stephen Daisley argues forcefully elsewhere on this page, Miss Sturgeon’s vision of the EU as a benign force for good has been knocked by events in Catalonia.

Of more immediate concern for Scots will be John Swinney’s clear signal that taxes are going to rise to pay for SNP profligacy.

We are already the UK’s highest-taxed workers, but even this is not enough for the SNP, which thinks people on modest salaries are rich. The uncritical audience in Glasgow lapped up Mr Swinney’s talk of a renewed drive for independence and swallowed the gloss he put on poor polls and more bad news from his key education portfolio.

But very soon ministers are going to have to tell the wider public exactly how much more they intend to take from pay packets and what they intend to do with it.

It will be clear at that point that the naked greed of a party with little competence and little to show after a decade in power will hurt more than just the mythical rich.