Theresa May met Jean-Claude Juncker last week at a fractious dinner in Downing Street. The issue of who will represent Britain is understood to have been raised

Theresa May will be barred from negotiating the terms of Brexit with her fellow European Union leaders, senior figures in Brussels have warned.

In a sign of an increasingly hardline approach, the prime minister will be prevented from joining discussions at future EU heads of state meetings, she has been told. The only person with whom she can sit down for talks is the European Commission’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.

The EU leaders’ position contradicts Mrs May’s insistence during a campaign speech last week that she would personally negotiate Brexit with the “prime ministers, presidents and chancellors of Europe”.

Yesterday she went further in pressing home her plan to play a role in negotiations, pledging to be a “bloody difficult woman”. It was an echo