Welcome to the Guardian’s weekly Brexit briefing: bringing you the top stories of the past week in Brexitland, arranged in an order that might – hopefully – help you make some sense of them.

Talking of making sense of Brexit, this should do the trick: Brexit: the final deal, a Guardian Live Event on 11 October, features Alison McGovern, Member of Parliament for Wirral South; Anand Menon, director of thinktank UK in a Changing Europe; Henry Newman, director Open Europe and chair Heather Stewart, the Guardian’s joint political editor. Join them to discuss the final Brexit deal and key takeaways as they unfold. You can book tickets here.

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Top stories

The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, reckons there’s a “realistic” chance of sealing a Brexit deal with the UK within the next two months, in time for a special summit in November that should be announced at meeting in Salzburg next week.

That could work because the deal will cover only the divorce – the financial settlement, citizens’ rights and the Irish border. The tricky bits, such as the future trade agreement, will only be outlined in a political declaration, with details to be thrashed out in the two-year transition period. So far, so good.

But not so fast. Although a fudge-flavoured declaration may get past a divided UK parliament, some EU countries still want the key principles nailed down, so there’s no chance of the UK cherrypicking the best bits of the single market.

And the plan depends on finding a solution to the intractable Irish border problem by the EU’s October summit. Barnier was “disappointed and irritated” by the UK’s failure to make progress on this; No 10’s refusal to countenance one possible solution – having EU officials stationed in British ports serving Ireland – won’t help.

Michel Barnier and Britain’s Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Although, contrary to reports, the EU likes some bits of Theresa May’s Chequers plan for Brexit, its key trade components, on customs and common standards, are non-starters, whatever the UK may say. At some point, Britain is still going to have to choose between a Canada-style free trade deal or a more Norwegian arrangement. And when that choice comes, it will be painful.

Meanwhile, the Tory party is still tearing itself apart over the kind of Brexit it wants and Boris Johnson’s manoeuvres, true believers in the European Research Group (ERG) are going over the top, union members back a second referendum, Labour is (kind of) keeping its powder dry, and whatever happens, the prime minister has to get the Brexit deal through parliament.

And the home secretary is prepared for civil disorder in the event of a no deal.

Best of the rest

Top comment

This isn’t really comment, but I wholeheartedly recommend it for a quick but comprehensive guide to where, Brexitwise, we all stand – and might end up – with just 200 days to go.

Rafael Behr, meanwhile, reckons remainers’ biggest challenge is not so much winning over Brexiters but getting people to re-engage with an issue they would rather just went away:

Disengagement is the biggest obstacle to the cause of reversing Brexit. Now unrepentant remainers also come across as cranks, banging on about Europe in ways that cause agnostic eyes to glaze over … Some 60% of all voters agree with the statement: “I no longer care how or when we leave the EU, I just want it over and done with.” Remainers have spent a lot of energy arguing with people who believe in Brexit, whose passion for it mirrors their hatred, because those are the only people who can be bothered to argue back. The moment is approaching when they will meet a tougher challenge: that sea of people beyond Westminster who neither love nor hate the EU, who had no strong feelings about membership before they were asked in 2016 and have none now, except perhaps a yearning to get the question out of their lives.

And Polly Toynbee says Brexiteers will slash the state in a fantasy vision of massive unfunded tax cuts and a free market free-for-all, and Theresa May must call their bluff:

Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg seek a deep diminishing of the state, with a low-tax retreat from public to private provision of services. That has been at the heart of true Brexitry from the start, the loathing of Brussels only an extension of deep-rooted anti-statism. When the Brexiteers call for no deal, on WTO rules, they want a wide-open free trading free-for-all, as their high priest of the free market, Prof Patrick Minford, has spelled out. Their vision of Britain’s future has no barriers, no regulations, cheap goods, and food from everywhere regardless of chemicals or hormones, regardless of the destruction of our farming and manufacturing … Brexit is a belief, a culture, a tic, an instinct, racist in many of its manifestations. Brexiteers dared not print a manifesto that exposed them in all their political nakedness. Theresa May should call their bluff.

Tweet of the week

A robust response to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s claim that a no-deal Brexit would boost Britain’s economy by £1.1tn: