David Davis returned from Brussels empty-handed on Monday after Michel Barnier rejected major parts of Britain’s ‘backstop’ customs plan to avoid a hard border in Ireland.

Mr Davis told the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator that work needed to speed up on preparing the future UK-EU trading relations in the hour long meeting in Brussels, which ended in frustration over the vexed issue of the Irish border.

“It is like we are coming from two different places at the moment,” one well-placed EU source told The Telegraph.

After the meeting, the European Commission published its initial analysis of the British customs plan. It damningly asked if the idea was really a backstop at all and repeated EU concerns over how customs alignment would work with Britain’s newly independent trade policy. Customs alignment alone would not prevent customs checks because there would also have to be regulatory alignment, the EU slides said.

The EU also insists the backstop cannot be temporary and should only apply to Northern Ireland and not the whole of Britain. Mrs May has ruled that out because it would create a border between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain.

On Thursday last week, Mr Davis threatened to resign unless there was an end-date to a British ‘backstop’ plan to align the whole of the UK with EU customs rules, if Britain’s preferred solutions of a free trade agreement or technological solutions fail, as part of an effort to prevent the return of a hard border in Ireland.