Because I love making myself popular, I’ve written my column today on why we need to stand up for the City thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ci…. A quick summary (1/?)
Even allowing for the impact of the financial crisis, and the Brexit vote, it’s pretty extraordinary how the City has moved from being central to our economic narrative to almost peripheral.
The Tories have barely mentioned financial services in recent years. Labour’s policy is essentially that brilliant Whitehouse/Enfield Question Time spoof: ‘If the bankers, the bonuses, the bankers, the bonuses, it’s disgusting.’
And during the Brexit negotiations, the City wasn’t so much on the back burner as in the deep freeze - partly because it very rapidly became clear that the regulatory conditions the EU was demanding for market access weren’t worth the candle.
But refighting the wars of 2008 is a huge mistake. Yes, the economy was way too tilted towards London and the City for way too long - in fact we’ve got a great CPS paper out on this tomorrow from @JakeBerry and @nickphking, which they’ve previewed today telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/…
But we don’t have enough world-class, high-productivity industries paying 10 per cent of the entire UK tax base that we can afford to let the City wither on the vine. As I say in the column, just think about eg Germany treating its flagship industry this way 
Brexit means less access to European markets, even if the negotiations on financial services go far better than we expect. (Witness headlines this week about shares and swaps going to Amsterdam.)
So we need to think extremely hard about what we can do to provide the City with a new competitive advantage - to scrap for every pound of market share rather than sinking back into that familiar smothering complacency that everything will be fine.
What would that look like? More detail in the column… thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ci…
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