“spaff some money on some geeks”
May’s joint chief of staff Fiona Hill instructs Britain’s most senior civil servant, the cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, to commission experts to come up with technological solutions.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-a-spiffing-tale-of-how-brexit-was-spaffed-away-1.3950422
"And then there was May. She simply refused all entreaties from her officials to make a decision on the most obvious question: did the UK want to remain in the customs union?
“Stop bringing me binary choices,” she snapped at them. “This is not going to be a binary choice.” She decided in mid-2017 that no-deal was impossible – but then decided not to tell anybody. Above all, she indulged a fatal miscalculation by some of her cabinet who continued to believe, as one minister tells Cook, “that the Irish were really bluffing about this”.