Those Brexiteers are at it again, keen for us to walk away from the EU without a deal and thus fall back on WTO rules. And yet, the car industry, for example, would be hit hard: it’s the dominant market is the EU. Without a free trade deal, it would be hit by a 10 per cent import tariff – the car components industry would face a 5 per cent tariff on its exports and these might be held up by customs and face additional duties if there was found to be a large non-British content. Faced with the prospect of a loss of competitiveness, big chunks of the industry would relocate within the EU. The same would apply to other manufacturing sectors.

Then there is the problem of non-tariff barriers such as product safety regulations. Britain runs a huge surplus in services such as financial, accountancy and legal but the WTO has only made very limited progress on liberalising trade in these sectors so that many service businesses may decide to partly relocate to the EU in order to maintain existing levels of trade. A no-deal outcome in the Brexit talks would, in my opinion, be deeply damaging to the UK economy and it is about time that the government should come out and say so.