Nearly a decade has passed since the Brexit referendum and another five years since Britain divorced the EU.

Yet still the national debate rages over how the departure from the EU ruined our economy.

The most quoted assessment is the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that it would knock 4 per cent of Britain’s productivity relative to the EU.

What the politicians and people propping up the bar at the Pig & Whistle fail to mention is that the timeline for this loss was 15 years, and far from booming, the EU economies, with exceptions in the Club Med, are stagnating.

Productivity in Germany, Europe’s ‘locomotive’ economy, lags the UK. That is not to say that Britain couldn’t do better if some of the current frictions such as the onerous EU requirements for some food exports, were removed.

Blaming Brexit, rather than growth-debilitating taxes, such as the rise in employee National Insurance Contributions, is economically illiterate.

It is disappointing that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, in her recent ‘Scene Setter’ Downing Street speech and other comments, rolled out the arguments of a decade ago. The suggestion that leaving the EU would somehow destroy the City of London is wildly off the mark.

Financial and professional services have long been a free float outside most trade agreements. 

They didn’t, thank goodness, impinge on Britain’s trade talks with Donald Trump which focused on motor cars, steel, and aluminium.

Far from being ruined, financial services are positively booming. Weaknesses have made headlines, such as the paucity of initial public offerings and vanishing companies from London listings.

Data from the City of London Corporation shows that last year the UK was the world’s biggest exporter of financial services, with a surplus of £92.6billion, outpacing the United States and Asian competitor Singapore. 

Overall financial services exports climbed for the fifth year in a row and totalled £122.7billion.

Despite Brexit, the UK’s financial and professional services exports to the EU climbed 8 per cent.

In business you lose some and win some. But core exports of services by banks, market makers and security dealers climbed strongly. 

London, despite higher taxes imposed on wealth creators, is the preferred base of operations for investment banks, private equity and hedge funds.

London's leadership in insurance took a severe blow because of the Lloyd’s of London crisis a quarter of a century ago and the buyouts of key players such as Royal & Sun Alliance.

The sector has come roaring back with traditional marine and aviation underwriting picking up momentum along with novel areas of cover such as cyber and climate change.

Britain is hampered by European mercantilism. Along with France, the UK has the most developed defence manufacturing system in Europe and is finding markets around the world. 

But the EU, driven by Paris, is refusing to allow the UK access to the €150billion Security and Action for Europe without payment of a ridiculous entrance fee. 

Keir Starmer has been so bogged down with domestic problems that this has become the enormous fish which is in danger of escaping the hook. Don’t let anyone say Brexit is at the root of the nation’s struggles.

Welcome Gnomes

Think how much worse it could be if the UK were Switzerland, another detached partner of the EU.

Disclosure in the FT that UBS, Zurich’s last global scale bank, has explored switching its domicile to the US will be an embarrassment to the Swiss authorities. 

UBS is incensed that the government is seeking to go beyond the Basel rules and demands that it holds more capital than its competitors. 

One understands the caution given the Credit Suisse explosion and the damage it did to Switzerland’s reputation as a haven for global investors.

The question for UBS chairman Colm Kelleher is why New York rather than London? After all, UBS is the home of Britain’s once garlanded investment bank

SG Warburg. The City also hosts the global operations of American investment banks and is a short hop to Zurich.