Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit negotiator, could not have been clearer. “There is no place [for financial services],” he said in December about a future trade deal with Britain. “There is not a single trade agreement that is open to financial services. It doesn’t exist.”

Technically, he was right. No trade deal incorporates a fully open arrangement on financial services. Not even the EU’s agreement with Canada, which includes financial services only in the narrowest sense — in areas of full alignment with Brussels’ rules. But Mr Barnier omitted one important detail. A comprehensive deal in financial services may not exist, but not for want of Brussels trying. Until 2016, EU officials were locked in the most complex set of trade negotiations ever attempted, the