Senior UK negotiating official: Not up for line-by-line negotiation on level playing field

"October is too late for a deal with the European Union," a senior UK negotiating official told Reuters on Friday. "We need to work intensively now and into July."

Additional takeaways

"UK is committed to the political declaration."

"There are possible outcomes between extremes of the level playing field and no deal."

"The fundamentals of being an independent nation are not a negotiating position."

"We would like to hold face to face talks now if possible."

"We need face-to-face contact to move negotiation forward."

"Leaders need to have an understanding of the next stage of the process before they meet."

"The coronavirus has delayed things, but fundamentals remain, there must be constructive process going somewhere which we need to test in July."

"Need to get into detail which we haven't done so far."

"We have floated the idea of tariffs, in not having to comply entirely with level playing field but it fell on stony ground."

"We're not up for line-by-line negotiation on the level playing field."

"Idea of tariffs is to us an obvious way forward, although not what we want."

Market reaction

The GBP/USD pair edged higher in the last hour and was last seen trading at 1.2672, gaining 0.6% on the day.