John Downing: 'Efforts to retrieve 1,200-plus squandered days in just a week make climbing Mount Everest seem like a walk in the park'

Ill-starred: Former Prime Minister Theresa May. Picture: PA

John Downing

Never knowingly undersold in the rhetoric department, Boris Johnson compared the minute-to-midnight quest for a Brexit fix to scaling Mount Everest.

But the task ahead of the EU-UK negotiating teams closeted in the centre of Brussels for some 60 hours of grinding negotiations since last weekend puts climbing the world's highest peak in the ha'penny place.