Those trade talks are going well.

The UK faces the near-impossible job of rolling over 40 deals struck between the EU and other countries, which we’ll lose access to on Brexit day: but our negotiators seem surprised the rest of the world isn’t bending over backwards to sign up.

Japan looks like the latest reality check to a UK trade department blithely assuming it could just cut and paste a major EU agreement which came into force at the beginning of this month.

Embarrassingly for Theresa May, who counts Japanese premier Shinzo Abe as one of her warmer international allies, the high-handed nature of our communications wound up the world’s third-biggest economy to the extent that it almost cancelled a round of trade talks due to take place this week.

Hamfistedly accusing it of dragging its feet on a deal, even if unintentionally, with comments that “time is of the essence” shows little awareness of the concept of “face” in Japanese culture, risking an affront to their dignity.

More to the point it’s actually one of the minority of countries we have a trade surplus with, around £1 billion in 2016, so even more reason to tread sensitively. The sooner the UK learns that a country of 65 million people has less economic heft than a trading bloc of 500 million, the better.

The Japanese will take their time, as we surely would if the roles were reversed, and see what further concessions they can wring out of us.

Since the Eighties, Japan has been one of the biggest investors in the UK, using it as a bridgehead into the much larger EU market. Don’t underestimate the sense of betrayal at May’s red lines on the customs union and single market, forcing many to relocate.

Nissan’s recent production decision over the X-Trail model and Sony’s decision to move its European headquarters to the Netherlands is just the tip of the iceberg.

When Abe came to London last month, tellingly he visited Europe first. I’m wondering when the penny will drop for the colonial nostalgia-struck Brexiteers selling the vision of a Global Britain beyond the EU.

The Japanese ructions are Brexit in microcosm: tearing down something to replace it with something much inferior in the indefinite future. There is some good news though: that trade deal with the Faroe Islands is sorted.

Tariff-free “Atlantic salmon, haddock and halibut” is secured. But we buy £200 million of fish and crabs from them, and export a paltry £6 million of goods to that bleak North Atlantic outpost. So even the Faroe Islanders have us over a barrel.