After Honda Swindon, where next? The Vauxhall factory at Ellesmere Port? The Jaguar factory at Castle Bromwich? Ford’s Bridgend engine plant? Will Bentley’s production at Pyms Lane, Crewe, be repatriated to the plants of its parent, Volkswagen, on the Continent?

Are the dominoes lining up to fall, joining Longbridge, Linwood and Speke, Coventry’s Browns Lane, Canley and Ryton factories and Ford’s giant carmaking complex in Dagenham among the catalogue of defunct British motor plants?

One of the UK’s few enduring industrial policies over the past three decades has been to attract and maintain investment in British motor manufacturing from Japan and Germany. From the middle of Margaret Thatcher’s administration in the 1980s, first Honda, then Nissan in Sunderland, then Toyota in Derbyshire signed up to