How do you talk to people who don’t know what they want?

HOW do you solve a problem like Boris and Theresa?

For those of you who haven’t heard, the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has got himself in major trouble after he was recorded taking a series of major swipes at his own prime minister and cabinet colleagues over Brexit.

Johnson was the keynote speaker at Conservative Way Forward’s summer reception at the Institute of Directors last Wednesday night.

At about 8.30pm, a select group of around 20 people went to a private room for a dinner.

For more than 60 minutes, the foreign secretary took questions from those present and Johnson was dangerously loose-lipped when he was questioned about the issues of the day.

The problem for Johnson is that his comments were recorded and leaked to the media.

Johnson insists he won’t compromise on the final terms of Britain’s future economic relationship, but said the Brexiteers are at risk of getting a deal far worse than they’d hoped for.

The government is so terrified of short-term economic disruption that it’s at risk of throwing away the opportunities presented by Brexit, he said. He ridiculed the concerns about disruption at the borders as “pure millennium bug stuff” and said it’s “beyond belief” that the Northern Ireland border has become an obstacle in the negotiations.

He went on to say that US President Donald Trump would do a better job than Theresa May in organising Brexit.

“I am increasingly admiring of Donald Trump,” Johnson said.

“I have become more and more convinced that there is method in his madness. Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” Johnson said.

“He’d go in bloody hard… There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But, actually, you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought.”

Johnson had a cut off the remainers in government who he said are so worried about the potential for short-term disruption after Brexit that they’re blind to the long-term benefits: “The fear of short-term disruption has become so huge in people’s minds that they’ve turned into a quivering wreck. They’re terrified of this nonsense,”

Johnson said: “It’s mumbo jumbo.” There would be disruption, Johnson said. “Yeah, of course. There will be some bumps in the road.” But, he said, the warnings have been overblown.

The “prophecies of doom” about disruption of customs are “pure millennium bug stuff”, Johnson said, referring to the hysteria about Y2K at the turn of the millennium.

“All the planes crashing from the sky. It’s absolute nonsense. It’s the 21st century,” Johnson continued. “You know, when I was mayor of London … I could tell where you all were just when you swiped your Oyster card over a tube terminal, a tube gizmo. The idea that we can’t track movement of goods, it’s just nonsense.”

He said the debate about solutions to the Northern Irish border has been blown completely out of proportion.

“It’s so small and there are so few firms that actually use that border regularly, it’s just beyond belief that we’re allowing the tail to wag the dog in this way. We’re allowing the whole of our agenda to be dictated by this folly.”

The comments are characteristic of the chaos that has engulfed May’s cabinet in recent days and illustrates the challenge being faced by the Irish Goverment.

As one minister put it to me yesterday, how is Dublin to know how to negotiate with a government that has still to figure out what it wants?

Aside from Johnson’s ill-judged comments, the Irish Government have greeted the publication of the latest British paper with a cautious welcome.

Tánaiste Simon Coveney said the British government’s temporary plan to avoid a hard border is a “step forward”.

Coveney said the British paper published yesterday gives more clarity about what it is proposing on a shared customs territory until something better can be put in place.

He said the important thing is that this temporary customs arrangement, which he hopes will be built into the Irish “backstop” on the border, will provide guarantees and reassurance to people there will be no customs checks on the island of Ireland.

Coveney said the “upfrontness and honesty” of the paper is welcome but “that it is only half the story” as other issues still need to be addressed.

He said that everyone wants to agree something more comprehensive that is based on future relationship agreements.

Coveney also said it is the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s team that has to be satisfied with the commitments made by the British government.

He said Barnier set out the tests where proposals need to be robust, legally sound and protect the EU single market.

Coveney, who was speaking yesterday on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, appeared not to be too concerned about the chaos in London.

May’s cabinet remains deeply divided and this week David Davis, her Brexit negotiator, spent Thursday pondering his resignation, primarily because he has caved so often in his talks with the EU and has precious few cards left to play.

From May’s point of view, it would seem that if he wants to remain at his post, Davis will have to stomach the most horrific of outcomes, in order to sign a deal.

What this week showed us is that such is the general state of mayhem in her Cabinet, that May’s ministers cannot figure out what kind of Brexit they want.

The EU’s strategy is clear to play for time, as shown by the lack of outrage at the likely slippage in deadlines.

But what is also clear is that the EU is quite happy to use the Irish border as a trojan horse to beat the British over the heads in the hope of forcing more concessions.

Davis convinced May to include the 2021 deadline for the additional transition arrangement but the language in the document was as watery as the Irish Sea.

To the hardline Brexiteers, the latest position highlights the problem with what is becoming known as the Hotel California strategy: you can check out, as Britain intends to, but never properly leave.

It would appear that May is moving much closer to a soft Brexit and it appears some of the previous hardliners like environment secretary Michael Gove who are now supporting her position.

Gove, publicly at least, has lost none of his verve for a clean Brexit but he now thinks it’s just too late for all this, that the civil service would not be able to cope — and that no deal now would mean utter chaos.

So he has come round to be a reluctant supporter of May’s position.

With the crucial EU summit now just three weeks away, doubts are increasing that substantial progress can be made in time.

But at the end of the day, Brexit was never going to be simple, but how many times more can we weather a week like we have had?