French business is playing last-minute catch up over the prospect of a hard Brexit amid increasingly plaintive calls from government and trade bodies to act or lose out to European and global rivals. As many as 30,000 French companies export to the UK, and 3,300 have British-based operations, according to government figures.

“I’ve just got off the phone from Brussels office and the news is not good,” said Thierry Pouch, chief economist of the French Chambers of Agriculture. “The European Commission refuses any renegotiation of the Withdrawal Agreement, we have zero room for manoeuvre. The only hope for movement is from political pressure but Emmanuel Macron has already ruled it out,” he told the Telegraph.

Mr Pouch has reason for concern: French agribusiness, he said, had a €3bn trade surplus with the UK; a quarter of UK imports of wine and beverages are French, along with 23pc of its potatoes and a fifth of its dairy products.