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One of Britain's best-known Brexit-friendly economists has warned the negotiations are not going the way the UK hoped.

Former Bank of England governor Lord King bucked the trend of City experts last year when he said Britain could seize "opportunities" outside the "pretty unsuccessful" EU.

But last night he said he was "not terribly impressed" with the government and voiced doubt over the talks.

It comes as Theresa May plans a major speech in Florence next Friday in a bid to break Britain's deadlock with Brussels.

Months after talks to leave the EU started, there are still bitter dividing lines over Britain's 'divorce bill' and the rights of EU citizens to stay.

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Lord King told the BBC's Newsnight: "If you're going to enter a negotiation, it's actually very important to make sure that the other side of the table knows that you have a fallback position that you're capable of delivering.

"That requires you to make clear publicly what the fallback position is.

"We've been waiting for over a year now and I must say that I'm not terribly impressed by how much of that fallback position has actually been stated, been implemented, and whether it's actually being managed properly within the civil service and the government.

"I don't think this is a statement about the potential impact of Brexit but I don't think that the negotiations are going in the way that we might hope. "

Leave-backing inventor Sir James Dyson agreed not enough progress had been made on Brexit talks, but said Britain had put forward "positive suggestions" that had "not been reciprocated" by the EU.

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He told the BBC: "I suspect that we will have to leave without a deal and we will trade under WTO regulations, which frankly, are going to hurt the Europeans more than the British.

"Business is about uncertainty and I think uncertainty is an opportunity and the opportunity here is that the rest of the world is growing at a far greater rate than Europe."

Mervyn King was the Bank of England's governor for 10 years from 2003 to 2013, presiding over it during the financial crash exactly a decade ago.

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In December he said: "It’s not a bed of roses – no one should pretend that – but equally it is not the end of the world and there are some real opportunities that arise from the fact of Brexit we might take.

“There are many opportunities and I think we should look at it in a much more self-confident way than either side is approaching it at present.

"Being out of what is a pretty unsuccessful European Union – particularly in the economic sense – gives us opportunities as well as obviously great political difficulties."