A great big Brexit cloud is on the horizon once again, and it’s raining diplomatic double-speak. The back and forth between Brussels and the UK in recent days has left most people bewildered about what is really going on. And no wonder. So here’s a reminder of some of the key phrases beloved by politicians and mandarins – and what they have come to mean. Talks are on a knife-edge A particularly popular one over the weekend. How long anything can stay on such a precariously thin edge is a moot point, but on a knife-edge we remain. Useful as a means of making it sound like a conclusion must surely be close, even as it really indicates that we have been teetering in this position for absolutely ages. They have a maximalist position A sparingly used variation on the cliched “having cake and eating it”, it basically means “they haven’t budged an inch in four years of tortured negotiation” (and neither have we). It could also mean: we are maximally screwed because they want the moon on a stick. There is still time Politicians and negotiators love this one. It really means – we have run out of time. Negotiators who have been there from the start may now feel that the concept of time has lost all meaning, and now find that whenever David Frost says something aggressive about haddock, their mind drifts to childhood trips to the seaside, fish and chips on the pier, salt in the air, seagulls wheeling overhead, Dad’s hand on their shoulder, a prelapsarian world where tariffs on frozen prawns meant nothing. Deal territory We will not be getting off this Eurostar until you remove the tariff on frozen prawns. They tabled last-minute demands They may have done. May alternatively mean: “I listened carefully to everything they had to say since triggering article 50 and if my fingers were in my ears until last week that was simply the will of the British people.” Stumbling block An image which ought to refer to minor impediments which your feet get caught up in, and now suggests something more like the diplomatic equivalent of the Great Wall of China. The principals will be speaking later this evening So far, all eyes have been trained on Lord Frost and Michel Barnier, the chief negotiators. But there’s no way either one of them will want to be blamed for the failure of the talks. So they push the problem “upstairs” – to Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen. We can’t break the deadlock, so now it’s down to you two. Time for calm heads When the diplomats start saying this, it rather suggests all hell has broken loose behind closed doors. Tempers have frayed and the shouting matches have begun. Clarity Lol.