I RECEIVED A visit recently from a European television news crew that wanted to canvass my opinion on the promised and presumably impending referendum on British membership of the European Union.
In the event, “in/out” could be used to describe the speed with which the reporter and his cameraman arrived, recorded and departed. The question I was asked was simply whether I thought the City would be wiped out, were the United Kingdom’s voters to decide to pull us out of the Union.
What I answered and why, I shall come back to in a moment.
Before that, though, I would like to explain for the benefit of non-British readers a thing or two about this country that might help them understand why, while the other major powers within the EU are looking to forge an ever-closer union, Britain is pulling the other way.
The greatest clue is to be found in Shakespeare’s Richard II, in which he describes, through the mouth of John of Gaunt: “This royal throne of kings, this sceptre’d isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”
Put in plain speech, Britain has no land borders to defend, it has no questions as to where it begins and ends. It is clearly and inalienably defined by its coastline.
That is a privilege enjoyed by no other major European country. As such, eternal peace, which the political union of Europe is designed to bring to formerly troubled borders, is a huge driver for those on the Continent.
The people of this country have no fundamental philosophical understanding of why such store is being set in emasculating national identities
The Germans and the French have been at each other’s throats for generations over whether Alsace and Lorraine are just that or whether they are rather Elsass and Lothringen.
The Italians and Austrians have been in dispute for just as long as to whether the German-speaking valleys south of the Alps, the South Tyrol, are Austrian or Italian.
And how about the Hungarian-speaking Romanians? Or the Romanian-speaking Hungarians? Permeable borders by the tens of thousands of miles.
Britain wants to trade but it has no need for the borderless union, so precious to the mainland. The people of this country simply have no fundamental philosophical understanding of why such store is being set in emasculating national identities.
SADLY, MY SPEEDY news team didn’t have the time to find out about this view and only wanted to know what I thought would happen to the City if the people of Britain were to vote to leave the Union. I think they were expecting a tale of woe, doom and disaster. I had to disappoint.
Although I am a declared, though not uncritical, pro-European, I suspect London could do well if no longer in the EU. Sure, Deutsche Bank is weighing up its options but I’d have thought that every bank, and every other business for that matter, must be reviewing its location policy on a permanent basis. Banks are not charities and their boards are obliged, if they are to fulfil their duty of care to shareholders, to seek out the most effective locations for their businesses.
Frankfurt and Paris can both look back on several failed initiatives to wrestle London to the ground. Wasn’t London supposed to have been wiped out by the decision not to join the euro? Will the estimated 270,000 French citizens who currently live in London suddenly go streaming back if Britain were to set sail on its own again? I doubt it.
On the contrary, the opportunity to escape the increasingly impersonal, central regulation that stalks European citizens at every turn would surely render an independent London more attractive than it already is. Banks wouldn’t leave; they’d come here in even greater numbers.
I would not want to suggest that British politicians are any more savvy in understanding financial markets than are their mainland counterparts but they are surely more understanding when it comes to accommodating the needs of their largest single generator of wealth. London could rapidly become a fully fledged offshore banking centre.
That is, of course, not to say that the UK as a whole would be better off without the benefits of EU membership. Non-members, most of which can now be found in the European Economic Area, have discovered that they are as tied to the rules set down by Brussels as much as the Canadians are curtailed by Washington’s whims. There’s not much one can do other than to grin and bear it.
ON WEDNESDAY, in the traditional Queen’s Speech – Her Majesty gets to read out what the government has written down for her – the first legislative moves towards the referendum were taken. Although the poll itself is slated to take place by the end of 2017, it is hard to imagine that it won’t be done and dusted by this time next year.
The leadership of both major parties will be canvassing to stay in and the Scottish Nationalists will be straining to stay in Europe at the same time as they are struggling to get out of the United Kingdom. How they find Westminster to be further and more remote than Brussels escapes me but so do many of their other arguments.
Much water will flow down the Thames before the outcome is known but it is the experience of many that, if in doubt, voters tend to favour the status quo. I am confident that Britain will vote to remain within the Union but if it doesn’t, looked at from my little vantage point in Canary Wharf, a Brexit might be great news for the City.
