Despite fears in the City, last year investment in the UK grew faster than in any other G7 country

Since 23 June 2016, there has been a steady drumbeat of warnings from the business community. Companies need certainty about this country’s future trading arrangements with the EU, they have said, or investors will have to shift their operations out of Britain.

Today the alarm bells are sounding louder than ever, as Airbus says that it is preparing to abandon plans to build aircraft wings at British plants.

The company, which generates £1.7 billion in tax revenues and employs 14,000 people in the UK, is frustrated at the government’s failure to spell out how aircraft parts will be regulated after Brexit, or the customs arrangements for shifting those parts over Britain’s borders.

Two years on from the referendum result, bosses lack the detail they need on the government’s plans JACK TAYLOR/GETTY IMAGES

Airbus’s intervention is one of the starkest yet, but it is not