Britain is 'inevitably' moving towards crashing out of the EU without a trade deal, a Tory former cabinet minister said today.

Former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said last year that negotiating a deal would be easy.

But today he joined a gaggle of Brexiteers urging the Prime Minister to tell EU leaders she's prepared to walk away from talks if they continue to refuse to discuss trade.

Paterson said in December that negotiations with the EU would start from a "position of strength" because "our European neighbours will want to secure access to the UK market as they sell far more to us than we sell to them.”

Speaking to the BBC's Today Programme this morning, his optimism seemed to have faded somewhat.

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Mr Paterson said it appeared unlikely that a trade deal would be struck with the EU "because they are flatly refusing to talk about it"; instead there was a "complete obsession with money" - the so-called Brexit divorce bill.

It was "inevitable at the moment, it is an ineluctable certainty we are going to end up with WTO at the end of this anyway" so it was better to "state that now" and give business time to prepare.

He said a trade deal with the EU is "the best destination, but what we should not be terrified of is the WTO".

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Mr Paterson said the UK could unilaterally decide not to impose tariffs if trade moved to WTO terms in an effort to protect consumers: "We could decide that, that would be up to our own elected politicians to make that decision."

And he rejected concerns that the lack of a trade deal could lead to queues at ports, claiming that only 2% of shipments were checked by customs, with nearly all trade done electronically.

As European leaders gathered in Brussels, he said: "We have to face the fact that this summit is not going to discuss any future trade deal. We are ineluctably moving down the road to a WTO arrangement so we had better start preparing for it.

"If they come back - and we very much hope they would - to talk about a free trade deal, that would be a bonus."

But pro-EU Tory former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan said: "It is absolutely not 'inevitable' that the UK ends up on WTO terms with no Brexit deal - it is what the hard Brexiteers want."