MANY Britons worried about a “hard Brexit” are clinging to a reassuring thought. Germany, the most important country in Europe, trades so much with Britain that it would suffer from a messy divorce between Britain and the European Union. So even if countries such as France want to teach Britain a lesson, the theory goes, Germany’s carmakers will use their vast influence to sway Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to go easy on Britain in its coming negotiations with the EU.

The first part of this thesis is true. Britain is Germany’s fifth-largest trading partner and its third-largest export market (after America and France). Some 750,000 German jobs depend on those exports, and Germany’s trade surplus with Britain is second only to the one it runs with America. Every fifth car made in Germany is sold in Britain, as are many German chemicals, machines and electronics. Britain is the biggest foreign investor in Germany, and some 2,500 German firms have subsidiaries in Britain, employing about 400,000 people there.

But the rest of the theory gets progressively weaker. Start with the notion that industrialists call the shots in Germany. They were certainly influential between 1998 and 2005, when the chancellor was Gerhard Schröder, nicknamed Genosse der Bosse (“fat cats’ comrade”). His signature economic reform, a labour-market liberalisation called “Agenda 2010”, was conceived in co-operation with businesses.

Under Mrs Merkel, however, “our influence has been shrinking,” says Lutz Goebel, president of the lobby representing the family-owned firms which many people think are the backbone of Germany’s economy. Business lobbies have lost many skirmishes in recent years. To their horror, the government has enacted a minimum wage, early retirement at 63 for certain workers, quotas for women on corporate boards and more. Business folk did win exemptions for about 2,000 energy-intensive manufacturers from paying the big surcharges that fund Germany’s subsidies for renewable energy. But it could not prevent the country’s reckless decision in 2011 to end the use of nuclear power.

Moreover, German business associations accept what they call “the primacy of politics”: that national priorities set by government can trump their own. A recent example was Mrs Merkel’s drive to convince the EU to impose sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. A pro-Russian lobby called the Ost-Ausschuss (Committee on Eastern Europe) opposed the sanctions. But the Federation of German Industry, an affiliated but much larger lobby, declared that it accepted them as necessary in the long-term interest of maintaining the international order. That ended the controversy.

Brexit raises similar questions of principle, notes Volker Treier, the head of foreign trade for the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry, of which almost all German firms are members. “Two hearts are beating in our breast,” he says. One worries about the economic consequences of Britain leaving the single market. The other worries about the integrity of that single market, should Britain or any other state cherry-pick conditions for membership.

That emphasis on principle extends even to the carmakers. “Yes, we certainly have influence,” says Matthias Wissmann, president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry. “But we are at least as interested in keeping the European Union together—in fact, that is our priority.” Britons are deluded, he adds, if they think German carmakers care only “about selling five more cars” rather than taking a long-term view.

Contrary to the illusions of some in Britain, Mrs Merkel thus has her own business lobbies firmly behind her. “We have to present our interests coherently,” she told a conference of the Federation of German Industry this month. Lobbies, she added, should avoid putting pressure on the negotiators for “comfortable” deals that jeopardise the single market’s four freedoms—of moving goods, services, capital and people. Asked whether he agreed with Mrs Merkel, Ulrich Grillo, the federation’s boss, had a simple answer: “Yes.”