Johnson meets EU president for Brexit talks

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hopeful that progress could be made in Brexit talks with the European Union on Monday as European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned that time is running out.

The British PM had said he would make clear he would reject any offer to delay Brexit further than Oct 31, in the first meeting between the pair since Johnson took office in July.

The two men were joined at lunch by the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, while Johnson was accompanied by Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and Downing Street's Brexit representative David Frost.

Juncker, who will stand down as European commission president on Oct 31, was expected to ask Johnson to spell out his ideas for replacing the Irish backstop.

The backstop is the controversial policy in the existing withdrawal agreement, rejected three times by members of Parliament, which would require the UK to follow the EU's customs rules to ensure there are no physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Johnson had said there were "real signs of movement" in Berlin, Paris and Dublin on getting rid of the backstop, the persistent stumbling block to a Brexit agreement. "A huge amount of progress is being made," he told the Daily Mail.

But the Guardian newspaper quoted EU officials involved in talks with Johnson's envoy, David Frost, as saying this upbeat account was not an accurate assessment of the situation.

"No, in fact people are a bit dismayed," said one EU source, describing the mood. "I am not even going to call them negotiations — the last session on Friday did start touching on content — that's actually quite a step forward … but we still should have been there a long time ago and (an end result) is still quite far away."

Reports have suggested Johnson is considering a plan to keep Northern Ireland more closely aligned to the EU after Brexit, as an alternative to the current backstop.

A Downing Street source told the BBC that Johnson would make clear to Juncker that "he would not countenance any more delays" beyond Oct 31.

"The PM will stress to Juncker that, while he wants to secure a deal, if no deal can be agreed by Oct 18 his policy is to leave without a deal on Oct 31 — and reject any delay offered by the EU."

The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the whole issue of whether the United Kingdom had the legal right to leave on Oct 31, come what may, could end up in court.

Meanwhile, at their annual conference on Sunday, Britain's Liberal Democrats overwhelmingly approved the party's plan of going into an election with the promise to revoke Brexit without a referendum.

The Liberal Democrats would still support a second Brexit referendum with an option of remain, but going into an election would promise to revoke article 50, the process of leaving the EU, if the party won an absolute majority — seen as highly unlikely.

The party's leader, Jo Swinson, said the policy would allow the Liberal Democrats to be "straightforward with people in an election", and that it would be odd for a Liberal Democrat government to be obliged to negotiate a Brexit deal it did not support just to put it to a referendum.