London’s Square Mile, the centre of the UK’s financial services industry, has long been a pro-European axis in a country often uncomfortable with the nature and pace of European integration. But with the drift of EU policy looking increasingly inimical to the interests of the City of London, could this be about to change?

To some extent it already has. For many years a senior debt banker argued vociferously that the British attachment to sterling risked squandering an opportunity for UK PLC to gain smooth, uncomplicated access to the European investor base in the bond market. But in light of the events of recent years he has cheerfully reversed that position and not just on the basis that the British exchequer has dodged a bullet from southern Europe.