THE JAPANESE AMBASSADOR TELLS IT LIKE IT IS

Well, the meeting yesterday between the PM and some leading Japanese companies with big investments in the UK must have gone well. I don't believe Mrs May can be in any doubt about the consequences of trade barriers, either tariff or non-tariff, being erected after Brexit. The Japanese ambassador gave a press briefing outside Downing Street following the meeting (HERE) and (HERE).

“If there is no profitability of continuing operations in the UK - not Japanese only - then no private company can continue operations,” Koji Tsuruoka told reporters on Downing Street when asked how real the threat was to Japanese companies of Britain not securing frictionless EU trade.

The article quotes a UK government spokesman saying Theresa May had agreed with them on the need to move on quickly in the Brexit talks to secure a trading relationship with the EU that is as tariff-free and frictionless as possible after the transition period.

A couple of points here. Firstly, there is a huge potential difference between "frictionless" (i.e. without friction) as the government originally suggested and "as frictionless as possible". One might say the contact between rubber and tarmac as on vehicle tyres is as "frictionless as possible" but it's obviously a lot more than say between a skater's blade and the ice. I think this is what bemuses the EU and baffles industry. Whereabouts on the scale of friction will we be? It cannot be as frictionless as now and more prevarication is just not possible. Decisions need to be made.

Secondly, it is blindingly obvious we are not able to control the degree of friction. The EU will do that, after all it's their market. We have effectively sub contracted responsibility for this to Brussels, or in other words we have lost control. Having invited Japanese companies to invest in Britain we are now proposing to cut their plants off from the market place. Madness isn't it?

And finally, someone posted on Twitter a photograph of Margaret Thatcher's speaking notes for a speech given in Japan in 1989, point 9 said:

"Welcome for Japanese investment, Dispel any doubts about the permanence of membership of the EC"

The underlining was hers. If there was ever any doubt about Margaret Thatcher's commitment to the EU it must have been dispelled by this. She would be turning in her grave at what is now being proposed by the party she led.