The CSFI put together a fairly brief questionnaire, the aim of which was to get a sense of where the City’s main concerns are when it comes to Europe. What’s wrong with the EU from the financial services sector’s point of view? And what’s right? If the UK stays in, what would people in the City like to change? If it quits, what are the main dangers/opportunities?
The report received 408 responses and the result is pretty overwhelming: nearly three quarters would vote to stay in the EU in the event of a referendum.
"The main conclusion is clear: “City folk” (i.e. those who are professionally active in and around the UK financial services sector) are most unlikely to vote to quit the EU. Nearly three-quarters (73%) say they will either ‘definitely’ (49%) or ‘probably’ (24%) vote to stay in, while only 12% will ‘definitely’ vote to get out.
"The emphatic vote to stay in was a slight surprise to us. However, it accords with broader polling data. Open Europe’s “Brexit Barometer”, for instance, puts the chances of the UK leaving the EU during the next Parliament at just 17%2. A February poll by YouGov is less unequivocal, suggesting that 35% might be willing to leave – but that is the lowest level of support for Brexit in over two years, and the trend seems clear.
"It is indeed a trend that we have noticed – and one that prompted us to initiate the survey. Over the last few years, it has been clear that the mood in the City with regard to membership of the EU has changed. Three or four years ago, when Brexit still seemed a very distant prospect, there appeared to be something exciting, even romantic, about it. Britain (it was argued) could be liberated from the ‘tyranny of contiguity’, could pick and choose its trading partners from areas of the world with better economic prospects than sclerotic Europe, and could become a sort of ‘super-Singapore’ – a high-growth, offshore financial centre, serving the global economy and not hemmed in by the dead hand of Brussels bureaucracy. More recently, however, as a referendum has become more likely, there has been a sense that the mood has changed – that the City is more worried about concrete short-term issues like jobs, and less enthused about the potentially pie-in-the-sky long-term prospect of becoming a global financial and economic powerhouse."
Full report
© CSFI
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