It is not only the EU that is alienated by Brexit. It is also Japan | William Keegan | Business

TThe damage becomes more and more palpable from day to day. Thus, far from earning 350 million pounds a week in the NHS, we find that the mere prospect of Brexit costs the economy 800 million pounds a week.

And this is only the beginning, unless madness can be stopped. I have already pointed out that its essential contribution to the establishment of the single market was one of the most beautiful achievements of Margaret Thatcher (the after Kenneth Clarke) and I say this as a person who has not been slow to criticize what I still regard as his originally ill-conceived approach to the subject. 39, British industry. The sado-monetarist period of the early 1980s was so disastrous that it caused the ICI president to go down to Downing Street and ask the Prime Minister if she wanted the company to stay in Grande -Britain. We now have current industrialists in a similar state of despair.

A crucial element of the Thatcher government's economic stimulus plan has been the pursuit of foreign investment, especially from Japan, in these islands. The Japanese government and industrialists have received solemn badurance that the UK is an ideal place to invest in the vast European market. In addition to creating jobs, the arrival of Japanese practices has had a beneficial effect on the British leadership and the unions in general.

Recently, Nissan and Honda have announced relocation plans – unfortunately, on Sunderland and Swindon sites where the majority voted in favor of permission. I have visited Japan many times over the years and I still have good contacts there. As soon as David Cameron announced the referendum, senior Japanese officials felt boredom. Frankly, they could not understand why a British prime minister would take such a risk, regardless of the potential threat to what was actually an Anglo-Japanese agreement that had worked well for decades.

Honda is polite in downplaying Brexit fears behind its decision, but the most real cause is pretty obvious. And now, Lord Adonis, who, as transport secretary, has negotiated important investments here in Hitachi after the collapse of train manufacturing in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s warns us New European Hitachi will also feel betrayed.

Which brings us to Cameron's successor, Clarke's "bloody tough wife," Theresa May. It can be said that the heart of the crisis stems from May's obsession with freedom of movement. The Conservatives are supposed to believe in freedom, but not in May.

When she inherited the position she had wanted for most of her life, the Prime Minister, who was apparently concerned that the Conservative Party was a "wicked party," wanted to do a lot of good things, socially beneficial.

Instead, malice has continued – social neglect is ubiquitous – and she is obsessed with opposing the kind of free movement of workers on which almost all Brexiters depend on the pork head, l? British economy. For that, she was and is always ready to sacrifice her membership in the customs union and the single market – apparently with the aim of keeping the United Conservative Party, an objective that seems more and more condemned.

Sir Ivan Rogers, our former ambbadador to the EU, tried to make sense of the Prime Minister's approach. He was finally released, but he does a remarkable job in warning of the dangers ahead. He was in a scintillating form before the Lords' restricted commission on the EU last Wednesday. In particular, he stressed the absurdity of the British wanting a "regulatory alignment" with a club whose departure is to voluntarily choose a regulatory misalignment.

In his book 9 lessons at BrexitRogers says: "Almost the entire British political clbad still thinks that its concerns about freedom of movement are shared by the 27. They are not … among the 27 other member states, without exception, freedom of movement is not at all the case external migration. "

He looks five to ten years ahead of the hard lessons to be learned. Me? I still hope that our elected representatives will vote to stay and, if not, a second referendum will allow voters to have a second thought – and young voters to have the first thought.

I like the badogy of Dr. Sarah Wollaston with the patient who enrolled in a serious surgery but who changes her mind after learning new information about the risks. We are surely inundated with such information every day.

William Keegan's new book, Nine Crises – Fifty Years of Coverage of the British Economy of the Breite (Biteback) Devaluation, has just been published. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p & p starting at £ 15, online orders only. Minimum Phone Orders £ 1.99