BREXIT will harm business in Dorset and lead to job losses at Bournemouth’s biggest private employer JP Morgan, a Bournemouth University economist has warned.

Professor Jens Holscher, who chairs the university’s department of accounting, finance and economics, said the area was set to suffer a loss of investment and skilled labour.

The exception could be the tourism industry, which might benefit from the weak pound, he said.

The German-born academic was giving a “migrant’s account” of the effects of Brexit on the EU, the UK and Dorset in a lecture at Poole’s Barclays House.

He said Dorset was “extreme Leave territory”, voting by 62-38 in last year’s referendum to leave the EU. The Leave campaign could be characterised as “anti-liberal”, “anti-social” and “anti-business”, he said.

He added: “This is the country Bonaparte referred to as a nation of shopkeepers. How could they be anti-business?”

Prof Holscher said the reaction to reports of his judgements in the Daily Echo suggested some campaigners were also “anti-education”.

He said Dorset would lose EU funding for projects such as the Dorset Growth Hub, which supports fledgling businesses.

And he recalled the warning of JP Morgan chairman Jamie Dimon that the bank was likely to lay off up to 4,000 staff in the UK if Britain left the EU.

“They are the biggest private employer we have in Dorset, where they employ 4,000, so some of these 4,000 will be those we have here,” he said.

He said there were some businesses which could fare better after Brexit and that the tourism sector could gain. “The cheap pound might attract EU citizens to come here, spend their holidays here, but also we might stay here rather than going abroad,” he said.

“Otherwise, we clearly can say that Dorset as a region, like other UK regions, will suffer from the exclusion of some certain EU agencies and programmes and maybe some markets as well,” he said.

He added: “We don’t know whether foreign direct investment form the EU to Dorset is going to continue, probably not. And also there might be some domestic inward investment going down because we lost our export markets.”

The country might have less access to skills from the European Union and could experience a “divergence of standards and regulations”, he said.

He pointed out that Poole firm Alfatronix had shelved plans for a new factory, blaming the uncertainty over Brexit, while more doctors and nurses from the EU were leaving the NHS than ever before.

Around European 400 academics left UK universities last year and while none had left Bournemouth University, it was becoming more difficult to recruit.

“In recent vacancies we advertised, we had no applications, zero applications, from the EU, which is very unusual,” he added.