Vince Cable, the leader of the Liberal Democrats party, has played down the likelihood of the UK crashing out of the European Union without a deal, comparing the government’s talk of such a scenario to the kind of acting performed by professional wrestlers.

Speaking on the first day of Mipim UK, an annual conference in London for the property industry, Cable described Brexit as “self-indulgent” and a “masochistic, frankly rather stupid economic backwards step”.