Jaguar workers next to suffer the fallout from the Brexit bomb?

The Brexit bomb is exploding over Britain’s manufacturing industry, and the fall out is spreading.

The latest evidence comes courtesy of reports that Jaguar Land Rover intends to axe thousands of jobs in the new year.

It’s not just down to Brexit. Sales in China have been falling, as has demand for diesel cars. The business, owned by Tata, the Indian conglomerate, has been struggling.

So some remedial action would likely be necessary regardless. Brexit, however, means it will likely be a lot harder than it otherwise might have been. As a result of it, more families will have the fears that now threaten to spoil Christmas for them justified.

The news follows Rolls Royce’s moving its design approval from Derby to Germany amid the ongoing uncertainty. It was said to be a precautionary and reversible step that won’t impact on UK jobs. Until that changes. In other words, after Theresa May are done with kicking their country in the teeth.

There has been a steady drip feed of these announcements. Last month, for example, Barden announced the closure of a ball bearing factory in Plymouth at the cost of nearly 400 jobs. It had been operating for more than 50 years. Brexit was cited as one of the reasons.

Car plants have brought forward their plans for temporary shutdowns to protect themselves from the worst of the potential disruption that could be on the way. Warnings have been issued of further pain to come. They have largely been ignored.

When Remainers said that Brexit would result in jobs moving overseas, and that Britain would lose business, they were accused of indulging in ‘project fear’.

All of a sudden reality is getting really scary. It is biting hard and it is biting into the lives of real people. Worse still, once these jobs; good, high quality manufacturing jobs that we could do with more of, are gone they are gone.

It all rather throws Labour’s equivocation into sharp focus, emphasising the need for an effective opposition that just doesn’t exist.

The people whose livelihoods are under threat should be its people. The protection of their jobs should be at the forefront of its concerns. Instead its leaders mouth platitudes and offer fantasies of a Brexit that won’t hurt if they just had their hands on the tiller.

There is theory, advanced by the writer Nick Cohen at the weekend, that they are actually rather relaxed about all this. Make ‘em suffer and they’ll unite under the red flag. It looks implausible, but how else do you explain the party's continuing lack of movement at a time when the country is shifting against this stupidity because of news like this?

There is also a theory that a little suffering will bring us all together as a nation. It’s usually advanced by people who won’t suffer at all because they have lots of money in the bank. That’s true of nearly all those who set this mad project in train.

One wonders how it would go down if that lot, and then Labour’s leadership, appeared before a mass meeting of Jaguar workers to explain themselves after the official announcement arrives (whenever it does).

It’d never happen. But imagining the scenes is grimly amusing, in a splatter movie type way.