Thread by @faisalislam

NEW:
Jaguar Land Rover boss Ralph Speth, at the same event as the PM tells Sky News that no Deal Brexit could hit its profits by £1.2bn... said he is “very very concerned” by the prospect of cross channel blockages on supply chains “stopping the production lines”

Indeed speaking from the same lectern just before the PM the Jaguar Land Rover boss Speth:
“Brexit is due to happen on march 29th next year. Currently I do not even know if any of our manufacturing facilities in the uk will be able to function on the 30th...”/2

JLR’s Speth: “Bluntly we will not be able to build cars if the motorway to and from Dover becomes a car park... Frictionless trade is not an aspiration but a necessity. Unfettered access to the single market is as important a part to our business as wheels are to our cars.” /3

Speth says a hard Brexit will destroy electric car vision revealed today “hard Brexit will cost JLR on its own without any supply influence more than 1.2bn pounds a year… wiping out profit, destroying investment in the autonomous connected electric vision we want to share” /4

JLR’s Speth says wrong Brexit deal risks “tens of thousands of jobs”
“Brexit – jobs have been shed when they should have been created. A thousand lost as a result of diesel policy. And those numbers will be counted in the tens of thousands if we do not get right Brexit deal” /5

Here’s the video from the chief executive of Britain’s biggest car manufacturer saying he doesn’t now know if any of JLR’s manufacturing will be able to function the day after Brexit in 6 month’s time - from same lectern used by PM moments later:

Spoke to Jacob Rees Mogg after the launch of his No Deal economic report - we had this interesting exchange on Jaguar Land Rover..

also confirmed that “yes, it is right” when I asked him to acknowledge leaving Single Market and Customs Union means an end to frictionless trade

quite interesting - Chequers enabled PM and No 10 to embrace “frictionless trade” in goods as the aim of Brexit policy, when before that it had been “as frictionless as possible” - big problem say car industry/ eurotunnel, the right aim says JRM, as frictionless = single market

The division lines are clear - Rees-Mogg at least acknowledges that frictionless trade is the point of the Single Market, and leaving it means an end to that.
No 10/. BEIS say we need to keep frictionless trade for sake of auto industry/ Airbus/ NI

JRM argument is that the friction which will inevitably return when we leave the Single Market/ Customs Union can be kept to a minimum and cites the 6 second clearance times at Southampton port - tho that is mainly a container port not Roll on roll off like Dover...