From the outside it looks pretty obvious that nobody in government has much of a clue what things will look like in March 2019. But what’s the view of civil servants? And, returning to the problem of the Irish border, what will the government’s backstop arrangement look like?

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There’s a lot of Brexit news happening this week, including of course votes in the Commons on the EU withdrawal bill. But, as we recorded this episode before the vote actually happened, we’re going to save coverage of that for next week.

Instead, this week we look at a couple of specific aspects of Brexit. First, we return to the subject of the Irish border to discuss government’s long-awaited plan for the backstop arrangement. And second, an aspect of the whole process that we haven’t really looked at so far all – how is the back office coping with Brexit? And what’s the impact of this ongoing shambles on civil servants?

Discussing all this and more with Jon Henley this week is the Guardian’s Brexit correspondent Lisa O’Carroll and Joe Owen from the Institute for Government.