Brexit brings more grim business news, but let's take some happy pills and try to find some consolations

Ford has warned the government it will do what is necessary to protect itself against a no-deal Brexit, while the British Chambers of Commerce says businesses have been hung out to dry

Ford has said it will act to protect its business in the event of a no deal Brexit (EPA)

In so doing I admit I’m rather putting myself in a position like the one the top PR person for BP found themselves in after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, or Volkswagen’s chief spin doctor was faced with after the company was found to have installed software to cheat emissions tests.

You have to take nuclear strength happy pills to find any positives in the current news flow.

There's a reason I used a car company as an example because today Ford held out the prospect of yet more mass lay-offs, while the British Chambers of Commerce said businesses which provide jobs, pay tax, invest in the economy, had been “hung out to dry” by Theresa May’s threat of a no-deal Brexit. The government has admitted it has run out of time for no-deal Brexit supplies and the ports are in no position to cope with what's coming.

Yes, inflation fell, but cheaper energy played a big role and prices are going back up as a result of Ofgem raising its price cap. So it won’t last.

But wait, we’re not here to criticise. We’re here to sing that Monty Python song, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”. So here's one big consolation from the current mess. However it ends, it should once and for all nail the Tories’ claim to economic competence, or any form of competence come to think of it.

There is a subset of people that will vote for them because of that. You’ll hear them saying things like, “well I know they're b******s, but at least they're b******s that know what they're doing”.

Right now they're proving themselves to be just b******s, without even the redeeming feature of being good at it.

Notwithstanding recent polls, that might make it a lot harder for them to get elected than previously when people look at the 'Conservative Party Candidate' under the name of their local MP, particularly if he or she is one of the Brexitremists Prime Minister May is in hock to.

If you have two bad options, but one pays at least lip service to caring about the sick, the poor, the disabled, schools, hospitals etc while the other is just flat out rubbish and mean with it, well, you do the maths.

Still not much of a fan of the Corbynistas, who could be the beneficiaries of this? Well here’s a consolation especially for you, courtesy of Ford’s warning that it will do whatever is necessary to protect itself from May’s hard Brexit.

That will inevitably mean shutting down car plants and throwing people out of jobs. Ford is far from the only car company set to swing the axe.

There’s nothing good about being chucked out of a job. It's horrible. I speak from personal experience.

But it will mean less members and perhaps less influence for Unite’s Len McCluskey. He’s been palling around with May and Business Secretary Greg Clark of late, and is seen as one of the chief blocks to Labour doing what it should do and supporting a final say vote, which is about the only thing that could save us from this godawful mess.

Slim pickings, it has to be said, but I did tell you I was taking uber strong happy pills. Wait, I'm feeling the full effect now. So maybe Len’s members will be alright after all. Maybe Ford’s warning, and that of the BCC, puts some backbone into the limited number of Tories who are still possessed of a little sanity and actually care about their country.

Clark is supposed to be one of them. There are allegedly up to 20 ministers who, we are told, have threatened to walk if May moves to drop the hammer on every last one of us.

To date they’ve proven themselves to be paper tigers, with about as much backbone and bite as squishy jellyfish shorn of their stingers.

But perhaps this leads one or two of them to say, lo, I have seen the light and if the country’s going down I want to be like Philip Lee, Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen, Sam Gyimah and the handful others who will at least be able to say they were on the right side when history books filled with opprobrium about their party are published.

This is all, admittedly, rather thin gruel. There really isn't much comfort to be drawn from today’s announcements. But we might as well start learning what that tastes like. We'll end up eating it if the experts Michael Gove and his mates like to trash have the right of it. Still, that means we lose weight. See, happy pills!