Will the City thrive after Brexit?

Ten years on from the crash, the banks have few friends and fewer still who are willing to speak up for them. Now, with the uncertainty of Brexit looming, there are fears banks and their staff could up sticks to the continent. Like them or loathe them, this wouldn’t be good for Britain’s economy: financial services were worth £124.2bn to the UK last year and the sector accounts for three in every 100 jobs in the UK. So what can be done to make Britain a hospitable place for banks to do business after Brexit? And how can we do that without alienating ordinary people? This was the topic of a Spectator dinner discussion sponsored by Barclays at the Labour party conference in Brighton. Guests included MPs, bankers, journalists and policy experts.

Barclays’ Lee Cumbes concedes that there is still a trust issue. Cumbes, the bank’s head of public sector EMEA, also accepts that the regulation of banks before the crash was too light.