Dear Prime Minister: In 1977, Margaret Thatcher visited the Nissan car factory outside of Tokyo. At the time, output per worker at Nissan was 400 per cent higher than at British Leyland, the largest UK carmaker. “It was so refreshing to see everyone working”, said Mrs Thatcher. “No one was standing around doing nothing.”

The rest is history. Nissan opened its car plant in Sunderland in 1986. Today, it employs over 5,000 workers and in total UK factories make close to 1.5m vehicles a year, 80 per cent of which are exported. While Mrs Thatcher did more than any other politician to discredit the notion of active government intervention in the economy, her courtship of Nissan ranks as probably the single most important act of industrial strategy the UK has seen in the last 40 years.

As you reflect on your visit today to the Nissan factory in Yokohama, you may recall this history. As you will remember, in the Thatcher era, Japan was believed by many to be on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy. Today, it is often regarded as a stagnant, post-bubble economy, weighed down by public debt and an ageing society. But that is only a partial account, at best. In fact, Japan still has several policies that the UK (and other countries) can learn a lot from.