"It is an open secret that no one will go and work in David Davis’s department [DexEU], and Liam Fox is regarded as a semi-lunatic. The only departments that have retained their institutional integrity during this crisis are the Foreign Office and the Treasury, but they have been sidelined in the Brexit negotiations which is a huge mistake because that is where most of the brains and ability in Whitehall is located.
“What essentially is happening is that a government-in-exile in the Treasury and Foreign Office is waiting for the collapse of the current strategy and the moment when it will have to pick up the pieces. The tragedy for the country is that unless something dramatic changes, that collapse will not happen until after we have left the EU in March 2019, whereas it is profoundly important that we understand the crisis that will hit and that we do not leave the EU.” "