Fair minded people make a reasonable assumption that, at any particular time – and even when you disagree with them – clever people are running the country. Decisions are made carefully and based on evidence. Expertise is utilised. Each small step fits into a wider strategic goal. Adults are in the room. Someone is driving the bus.

It is somewhat disconcerting, therefore, to discover this is not always the case.

I enter as evidence two pieces of news from the past 48 hours. First, the curious suggestion that Theresa May could try to secure a bilateral arrangement with the Irish government to circumvent the dispute over backstop.

Given the UK is leaving the EU partly so it can strike independent trade deals with other countries, it’s a bit odd to assume the Irish, proud members of the EU, are able – let alone willing – to strike independent deals around trade with third party countries (as the UK will become).

So why leak such a wild, unworkable proposal to the Sunday newspapers? Alas, Theresa May is surrounded by the most shockingly inept bunch of advisers since Abraham Lincoln was urged by his staff to take the night off and go and catch a show.

Time and again, the Prime Minister is left exposed by a team that simply cannot see the punches coming, displaying a wilful ignorance of Irish affairs.

Matthew O’Toole, who worked in the Downing Street press office under David Cameron, makes much the same point in this morning’s Guardian. Most people in Westminster know more about the dark side of the moon that they do about this far-flung corner of their own state.

The second story concerns this morning’s front page splash in the Daily Telegraph, the in-house journal of the Conservative leadership: ‘PM’s Plan B: Good Friday deal could be rewritten.’ The idea is that clauses would be inserted guaranteeing no hard border. It’s a way to ‘reinforce trust with the Irish,’ apparently.

‘Ministers believe that adding text into the agreement would serve as a way of avoiding having to commit the UK to the backstop,’ the paper reports. The story doesn’t elaborate on how this will be achieved and seems at cross purposes. A bit like an alcoholic pledging to give up scratch cards.

Quickly disowned, the story – mad and ominous in equal measure – has plausibility when you consider Karen Bradley, (still apparently the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland), didn’t know nationalists didn’t generally vote for unionists, and vice versa.

Not to mention Michael Gove, the ambitious environment secretary, who opposed the Good Friday Agreement, preferring a beefed-up shoot-to-kill policy instead.

As the enlightened readership of this website will already well know, the Good Friday Agreement is an international treaty, registered with the United Nations and to amend it would require the active co-operation of the Irish government as well as all the parties in Northern Ireland.

I need hardly dwell on the point that to think it can be unpicked on a whim is absurd. It isn’t meant to be tampered with, certainly not by a desperate Conservative Prime Minister trying to placate the DUP – a party that actively campaigned against the agreement.

So what’s going on?

The government’s entire approach to Brexit is now simply a combination of rank incompetence and utter desperation. I don’t mean that simply to be discourteous, it’s just a fact.

There is no cunning strategy being worked out that explains why Downing Street is floating such crazy and unviable suggestions. No conspiracy. No fiendish plot. They are veering all over the road because no-one is driving the bus any longer.

It’s really that simple.