May is arriving in Japan to drum up interest in fixing a trade deal post Brexit. She touches down just as the country is caught up in the North Korean missile crisis. She will offer words of solidarity and encouragement, but really the UK is hardly a player in this strategic area any more. She will also find that Japanese corporations, already heavily invested in the UK, are becoming increasingly nervous at the drift and ambiguity of her government’s negotiating record thus far with the EU.
The trade position is further complicated by the fact that Japan is just about to complete its own trade deal with the EU, to which it is giving priority. The Japanese are not time wasters and when nobody knows what Britain is willing to settle for with the EU, there is scant prospect that, beyond polite words, they will do much. May’s staff have been briefing that perhaps it would be possible, to speed up the process, to use the EU/Japanese deal as the framework for a UK post Brexit deal.
Good idea, but if that is where we wind up, would it not be better still to stay in the EU and have our cake and eat it?
And what are and where are the actual material advantages of leaving the EU?
Is it not time for somebody to offer some hard evidence and real facts?