Despite the BBC’s Katya Adler Tweeting “EU sources confirming that the two sides are nearing an agreement on fish” last night, both the UK and EU have said that this is totally wrong. A UK Government source briefed last night that “There’s been no breakthrough on fish. Nothing new has been achieved on this today.” This morning, Barnier corroborated the UK Government source, telling EU ambassadors the reports saying there had been a breakthrough on the fisheries question were “completely untrue”. So why is Adler’s hake news Tweet still up?

To compound things, BBC Brussels correspondent Nick Beake appeared on the Today Programme this morning continuing to talk up the false reports – implying it was in British interests to deny the report as it gave the UK greater room for manoeuvre. Yet by 7 am, reports had already circulated that Barnier too had strongly denounced the news as untrue. It now looks like the BBC is deliberately portraying the British side as less honest than the EU…