A no-deal Brexit is now all but inevitable

Coronavirus is obscuring much about the future of the EU – and Britain’s relationship with it. Not everyone is joining the dots, but business is. And this means the decision for a no-deal Brexit is being taken outside of the official negotiations.

Nissan unveiled its global restructuring this week after making a £5 billion net loss in the last financial year. It will close its Barcelona factory with a loss of 2,800 jobs while the Spanish government has said this was the end of Nissan’s manufacturing in Europe. And so it is if Europe means the EU. For Nissan also announced that the future of its UK plant in Sunderland was secure. Why is this significant? If we cast our minds back to a pre-Covid world, on 3 February the Financial Times carried a headline ‘Nissan drafts plan to double down on UK under hard Brexit’. According to the leak from two individuals involved in the discussions, in the event of a hard Brexit and UK-EU tariffs on car exports, the Japanese carmaker would concentrate on boosting its 4 per cent UK market share to 20 per cent.

Meanwhile, the ailing French vehicle manufacturer Renault, in which the French state has a 15 per cent share-holding, has announced the closure of three plants in France and thousands of job losses.