Welcome to Sharp Talk. This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Stephen Fiddler.

Stephen Fiddler is the UK and Brexit editor of the Wall Street Journal. The position he has held since spring of this year.

And before that, he was Brussels Bureau Chief of the Wall Street General for seven and a half years.

Steve, we're into the 15th month now since the UK referendum of membership of the EU.

It's five months as it, since or even more, that since Theresa May trigger the Article 50 procedure, the notification.

And we're now towards the end of the third round of Brexit

negotiation between Barnier Davis and their respective team. So this conversation is going to be

about taking the pulse. Is there any kind of progress to report on either side after all this

activity? I think in some areas, some technical areas mainly there's been some progress. I think in some areas, some technical areas, mainly, there's been some progress.

I think it's been probably the most progress on the issues around citizens' rights in particular.

But there is a long, what's extraordinary, I think, just over 20 months or whatever it is until the UK leaves on March

2019, how little we know about the eventual shape of the relationship. I mean, things have become

clearer about what the UK wants, but we're still in an extraordinary uncertain situation. I think businesses on both

sides of the English Channel, but particularly in the UK, are still really in the dark about

where they're going to be, you know, in March 2019. And I think that's remarkable, given how far we, how close we are to

leaving. There still seems to be quite a hard divide between the EU 27 and the UK in terms of

what the discussion should even be about. As you know, the UK wants to talk about the future

relationship as much as the Article 50 details. And Barney and his team are saying, first we'll talk about

the exit bill, the citizens' rights, as you say, and the hard border in Ireland. So to what extent

do you have any sympathy for the UK's concern that the U-27 are rather inflexible on that so-called

sequencing?

Well, I think that there is a real question about how you can conclude these four issues,

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