Johnson's Brexit disaster has broken up the car industry

"Let's just be clear. We are about to witness, in the coming few months and years, the slow death of the British volume car industry. Another victim of Brexit, the malign gift from Boris Johnson to the British people that just keeps on giving. Another British industrial success story sacrificed on the altar of that elusive god, "Sovereignty".

- SEAN O'GRADY

And it is a terrible tragedy because it has been inflicted on a people who were never ever told by the sultans of Brexit, the likes of Johnson and Nigel Farage, the truth about what was about to befall them. It was always the greatest of ironies that some of the places that voted for Brexit in 2016, such as Swindon and Sunderland, were so dependent on the car industry, which depended itself so heavily on easy access to European supply chains and the vast single market.

If they'd known in Swindon that Honda would soon close, if they'd been informed in Sunderland that Nissan would in a matter of a few years be reconsidering its commitment, would they have voted Leave so readily? The warnings about imminent disaster could hardly be clearer now. The giant Stellantis group, which is essentially what we used to know as Peugeot, but which now owns vast swathes of the global car industry including Vauxhall's electric vehicle production in the UK, is quite explicit.

They may as well be because at this stage they've got nothing to gain by being diplomatic. In the approach to the referendum, big players such as BMW and Toyota were wary of intervening for fear of making matters worse. The trade body, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, confined itself deliberately to setting out facts and reasoned argument rather than lurid menace. The industry was quiescent, despite having so much at stake.

Not any more. In a leaked memo, Stellantis openly discusses the future of the plant at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, which now makes electric vehicles, and the wider domestic industry: "If the cost of EV manufacturing in the UK becomes uncompetitive... operations will close. Manufacturers will ... relocate manufacturing operations outside of UK, as seen with previously established UK manufacturers such as Ford and Mini."