Will EU leaders chuck Chequers in Salzburg?

This week’s EU summit in Salzburg should settle three important Brexit questions of profound important to this country’s future and that of the PM too. Most importantly, the leaders of the EU 27 are being asked by their Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and the EU president Donald Tusk how specific and prescriptive they want the Political Declaration on Britain’s prospective relationship with the EU to be. In a way it is astonishing, with just six months to go before we’re out, that Barnier and Tusk do not know something so fundamental about their wishes. And truthfully it is mostly about finding out from the German chancellor Angela Merkel whether she has backed away from president Macron of France and his desire for the framework of the future partnership in commerce and trade, security and foreign policy to be established in some detail and certainty now.

To be clear, the judgement the leaders are making is more about the state of British politics than about the fundamentals of how they see their future links to the UK.