Dr Kay Swinburne has never been afraid to ruffle a few feathers. The former investment banker and Welsh Conservative member of the European Parliament was one of the architects of the second iteration of Europe’s trading rulebook, the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive — a widely unpopular but central pillar of the European regulatory response to the financial crisis.

She was also among the first to caution that the EU could start “looking inwards” once the UK exited the bloc and to warn that EU policymakers would look to further change Europe’s trading regime soon after the implementation of MiFID II’s sweeping new set of laws.