A decade on, the economic spreadsheet tells a story that Brexiteers never dared to fully script. The City of London is outperforming its European rivals. Paris and Frankfurt are playing catch up, and they are losing.
New data from the Office for National Statistics shows the UK financial services sector has grown 8.2% since 2016. Frankfurt? Down 2.1%. Paris? Flat. The absolute numbers are brutal. London remains Europe's undisputed financial capital, handling 36% of global foreign exchange turnover. EU dreams of 'financial sovereignty' are just that.
But here is the part that will sting for the 'Project Fear' crowd. British GDP per capita is now €49,500. The Eurozone average is €38,200. That is a gap that has widened, not narrowed, since the referendum. The Treasury's own 2016 forecast of a 6.2% 'permanent loss' of output looks like the work of shoddy soothsayers.
What happened? The 'oven-ready deal' that Boris Johnson promised was never delivered. Yet the economy adapted. Friction was managed. The banking passport was replaced with equivalence regimes. The real story is regulatory agility. The UK broke from EU solvency rules, tweaked the listing rules, and made it easier for SPACs and tech firms to list. Brussels is still deliberating. London already acted.
There is, of course, a 'but'. Trade with the EU has fallen. Exports of goods are down roughly 13% compared to a no-Brexit counterfactual. But the services surplus has exploded. The UK now exports more to the US than to the EU. Global Britain is not a slogan. It is a trade pattern.
The political mood in Brussels has shifted from anger to envy. EU officials are quietly copying British reforms. The 'Lisbon Agenda' is dead. Long live the 'London Agenda'.
Downing Street is cautious. They know the Brexit dividend is not yet in pockets. But the data is the data. Sovereignty has a price, and it seems the City is willing to pay it. The question for Keir Starmer's Labour is whether they will stop apologising for the referendum result and start claiming the win.
For now, the numbers speak. London is still the place where the deal gets done. Ten years on, the vote to leave is looking less like a leap of faith and more like a calculated gamble that paid off. The Eurosceptics were right about one thing: the EU was a regulatory straightjacket. Freed of it, the British financial sector is running faster than anyone expected.
The next decade will test whether the rest of the economy can catch up. But for the City, the divorce has been a liberation. You will not hear that from the Treasury. But you will hear it in the champagne bars of Mayfair.
