Alan Johnson is touring firms across the East Midlands with a camera crew today, hoping to speak to business owners who want to stay in the EU. You might think the pictures at the factory of clothing manufacturer David Nieper look a little awkward…

Just last week, managing director Chris Nieper, above left, said that Britain’s influence in the EU is “absolutely pitiful” and that business has “nothing to fear” from Brexit:

“It is not where the future is so I don’t think Britain has to attach itself by the hip to the Eurozone. We must consider the world market. They are all trading with us… 

I don’t worry at all about our ability to sell in the Eurozone as a result of this vote going one way or another.

We employ staff in the EU itself and the staff we’ve got in our French office, our German office, our Dutch office, et cetera, are natives of the EU.

To get some kind of feeling whether a Brexit would affect us or not, I did a small and very unscientific survey, where I carefully wrote a neutral question for our European staff: ‘Do you think our customers would react differently to our product if Britain was no longer a member of the EU?’ To my surprise, unanimously, across all our offices in Europe, they thought it would make no difference whatsoever. Absolutely zero.”

In fact, last year, Nieper fully came out for Brexit:

“There is a regulatory cost to us, a financial cost to us, from being a member of the EU, and there’s a loss of control, actually, for the British Parliament – it’s no longer the end decider of all laws, we’ve given that away to an ultimately higher parliament in Europe.”

Did no one at the In campaign think to check before Alan turned up with a film crew?