Brussels has taunted Theresa May over her 'insane' Brexit plan as she heads to Ireland on the latest leg of her struggle to get a deal.
The Prime Minister met a wall of resistance from EU chiefs to her pleas for changes to the backstop in a brutal round of talks in the Belgian capital yesterday.
EU council president Donald Tusk stoked tensions by dismissing Mrs May's objections to his jibe about Brexiteers deserving a 'special place in Hell'.
He also praised a rival proposal from Jeremy Corbyn to lock the UK in a customs union - while commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker insisted the Withdrawal Agreement will not be reopened.
Even though there was a small comfort as the bloc agreed to re-start discussions between technical teams on a solution, it now seems impossible for Mrs May to have a new package ready to bring back to the Commons before the end of February.
Theresa May met a wall of resistance from EU chiefs to her pleas for changes to the backstop in a brutal round of talks in the Belgian capital yesterday
That would be barely a month before the UK is due to crash out - raising the stakes dramatically.
As the process threatened to spiral deeper into acrimony, a senior EU official complained that Brexit was 'still at square one' and they had 'lost the month of February'.
'Mrs May is now flirting with nodeal and there's a point where we're going to enter full blown blame game mode," the official told the Telegraph.
They claimed the PM was determined to run the negotiation "down to the wire", describing the remaining timetable for striking and ratifying a deal as "insane".
Mrs May will meet Irish premier Leo Varadkar for dinner tonight as she continues her shuttle-diplomacy to try to break the deadlock.
Ahead of her talks with the Taoiseach, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox will meet in the Irish capital with his Irish counterpart, Seamus Woulfe.
Mr Cox has been leading work within Whitehall on providing either a time limit on the backstop or giving the UK an exit mechanism from it.
Both proposals have received a dusty response from Dublin, which insists the backstop cannot be time limited if it is to provide an effective 'insurance policy' against the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mrs May, however, has warned she needs legally-binding assurances the UK will not be tied to EU rules indefinitely through the backstop if she is to get her Brexit deal through the House of Commons.
Ahead of their talks, Mr Varadkar will travel to Belfast for talks on Friday with the main Northern Ireland parties.
Meanwhile Downing Street has said ministers are looking 'with interest' at a letter from Jeremy Corbyn setting out the terms on which Labour would support a deal in Parliament.
The move provoked a furious outcry from Labour Remainers - who fear the plan effectively kills off their hopes of the party backing a second referendum - with warnings from some MPs they could quit the party altogether.
The PM will tonight have dinner with Leo Varadkar (pictured left in Brussels with Donald Tusk earlier this week)
Mrs May had a series of awkward encounters with EU chiefs including Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured) in Brussels yesterday
Ireland could suffer a crippling economic hit if the UK crashes out of the EU without any agreement in place.
Dublin's finance minister Paschal Donohoe said last month that growth could be over 4 per cent lower over the next five years if there is no deal - and other estimates have put the damage even higher.
There are fears of food shortages and huge queues at ports, with speculation the consequences could be worse than for the UK.
Plans published by the Irish government before Christmas insist it will still try to avoid a hard border with Northern Ireland even if there is no deal, despite the EU commission suggesting this will not be possible.
But they warned there would be
