European idealists who saw Brexit as a chance to make Europe the world’s third global power of the 21st century - along with China and the USA - with a financial centre to match those strategic ambitions - were struggling to work out how to make that happen in practice.

“The EU still has a fundamental problem which is that you can have say an ambition of wanting to build up a rival to London but then it gets harder to work out how in plausible terms that could happen.

So I’m not sure there is a big game plan.” Instead, Mr Browne said the early signs were that Europe was seeking to hedge its bets by looking to repatriate some key London financial business - including the trade in euro clearing - while retaining the benefits of London as a preeminent European financial hub.

“If Option ‘A’ is accepting London’s primacy, Option ‘B’ is building up a capacity within the Eurozone which can in time plausibly rival London and, maybe even further down the track, supplant it,” he said.

“The question is ‘is that plausible’. I think that quite a few people’s answer in Europe is ‘not for the time being’ but we shouldn’t pursue option ‘A’ to the extent which means that option ‘B’ becomes impossible.”