What Cameron wants from Berlin and Brussels

David Cameron with Lord Anthony Bamford (centre) in 2014

The views of JCB, one of the UK's biggest manufacturers, are widely seen to carry weight among ministers, because its owners, the Bamford family, are one of the Tory Party's top donors.

And as a British exporting success, what it says on how to win in export markets should probably be heard more widely (and see more on this from my colleague Kamal Ahmed).

Which is why its view is so striking, that the UK should vote to leave the EU, unless the prime minister secures a reduction in EU red tape on British business.

Because there is no evidence that David Cameron has a UK opt-out from business red tape on his shopping list when he visits Berlin, Paris and Brussels.

According to senior members of the government, the big things he is looking for are:

• Permission to refuse in-work and out-of-work benefit payments to new migrants for four years after they enter the UK (which you will presumably recall, from the general election battle)

• New single-market rules so that the UK can't be always outvoted by eurozone members acting as a bloc, similar to the protection we received when the single-currency members moved towards so-called "banking union"

• Some kind of British exemption to that great principle of the EU that members should be striving towards "ever closer union"

The noises out of European capitals suggest it is moot whether he and his main negotiator, George Osborne, will get all or any of these - though it is also clear that no leader wants to bundle the UK towards the exit.

But there is no suggestion that Cameron and Osborne are looking for an opt-out for British business from EU regulatory requirements.

To be clear, the single-market voting protection they want is to prevent the eurozone discriminating against non-members of the euro such as the UK when determining the rules of EU markets.

But if the UK gets the kind of "double-majority" voting system for the single market that it secured at the end of 2012 for banking regulation, that is not a bulwark against red tape, just a protection against red tape that is perceived to be disproportionately harmful to euro "outs".

In fact, Osborne and Cameron might take the precise opposite view of JCB - that one reason to stay in the EU is to keep up the British fight against burdensome and over-the-top business rules,

And when I talk to German officials, the reason they normally cite for wishing and hoping that the UK doesn't take the one-way ferry out of the EU is that they don't want to lose the UK's liberal-market advocacy in EU debates.

Probably what matters more about JCB's intervention is the other point it makes, which is that - in its view - British exporters would cope perfectly well if the UK struck out on its own.

In other words, the rattle of JCB's machinery is music to UKIP and the sceptic wing of the Tories.

But it is headache-inducing cacophony for Cameron and Osborne - because they are acutely aware that very big international businesses based in Britain, some of them British, some foreign, take a view that is diametrically opposed to JCB.

For them, seamless access to EU customers - and those in countries where the EU has negotiated bilateral trade agreements - is one of the big reasons they are based in Britain and invest in Britain.

It is why when I asked the Bank of England's governor Mark Carney on Wednesday whether the uncertainty about Britain's future membership of the EU could on its own have a negative impact on our economy, he acknowledged that it could - in that there is a risk of an investment hiatus, pending the referendum result.

Perhaps what JCB's intervention shows more than anything else is that expectations of what Osborne and Cameron can and should try to achieve in their EU negotiations are all over the shop.