Trickles to streams, streams to rivers. Finally it looks like an exodus.
Two years ago, shortly after the Brexit referendum, the FT Weekend edition published an article by Tyler Brûlé, the flamboyant Canadian publisher of lifestyle magazines Wallpaper and Monocle. The article was a tale of two cities, Montreal and Toronto, as well as the author's personal story of growing up in the Quebec capital.
In 1976 Montreal was a world city, and the undisputed home to most of Canada's blue-chip financial and industrial companies, international headquarters and most powerful families. It had just hosted the Olympics, had built a new second airport to cater for 50m passengers and upgraded its public transport infrastructure to accommodate the huge number of new visitors expected to come and experience its glittering restaurants, bars, shopping centres and cultural amenities, along with its top-rated sports teams and sophisticated metropolitan buzz.
The city was also a hotbed for the thrust for independence from the Dominion of Canada led by the French majority in the state, who had long been agitating for a closer alliance with France and even the EU. While such Gallic yearnings had helped spark the very dynamism and unique status the city enjoyed in a somewhat homogenous North American urban landscape, the heavy-handed introduction of French language laws and other forms of chauvinism gradually tipped the scales; almost surreptitiously, the life-blood of the city started seeping away.
In 1995 Quebec went the whole hog and put a referendum to the people as to whether they wanted to be in or out of Canada. The Remainers won, by a narrow margin of 51%. Thus cowed, we haven't heard much from Quebec separatists since.
But the damage was done. The obsession with Quebec's political affairs, the money, time and opportunities wasted while pandering to the rights and wants of Quebecois, had the effect of turning the rest of Canada off. Most felt that the madness was in holding the referendum in the first place. People turned their gaze away, and started focusing on other cities and regions in Canada's thriving economy.
The hollowing out of Montreal began. Since those heady days, the city's population has stagnated, and it has long since been overtaken by Toronto as THE important commercial and financial hub north of the 49thparallel. Even the mighty Bank of Montreal shifted its corporate headquarters to the booming capital of Ontario.
Montreal is still a significant city, brimming with cultural edginess and a diverse ethnic gastronomy, well worth visiting. But big business has moved away, to re-establish itself in places more in commercial lockstep with its business partners. The ambitious new airport was demolished in 2016, having been mothballed a decade earlier.
Much is being made this week of Deutsche Bank's decision to move almost half of its euro clearing activities from London to Frankfurt. Deutsche is one of the five largest clearers of interest derivatives, and has been doing all its clearing to date in London. The move will provide a big boost to Deutsche Börse's ambitious plans to concentrate clearing in Frankfurt, an area subject to strong regulation and supervision in full conformity with EU standards.
London Stock Exchange, which owns the hitherto incumbent London Clearing House, is warning of the loss of 100,000 jobs if London loses its status as the euro clearing hub. As the undisputed leader, the LCH has been processing up to €1 trillion of notional deals per day; clearing of these derivatives has become a key Brexit battleground for regulators, banks and exchanges. The loss of business, while not yet measurable in large job numbers, can provide pointers to future directions. Trickles turn into streams, streams into rivers - until a full-blown exodus is under way. Ask Montreal.
The likely high water point of folly was Theresa May's recent shenanigans at her country house retreat at Chequers, which bound her Cabinet to a unanimous support of Britain's case in the upcoming negotiations with Brussels, from which clear support from the EU side is a prerequisite if Britain is not to crash out of Europe ignominiously in March of next year.
It's not at all clear that Mrs. May can garner sufficient support among her own party to even sit down with EU negotiators to discuss her demands – to be in the single market when it suits, freedom from the common external tariff but with its own unique customs arrangements, control over movements of people, and freedom from the tyranny of the European Court of Justice. It's a tall order, and it's almost certainly not going to happen.
At a press conference, Angela Merkel took a question-and-answer session from a room full of jostling journalists, for a full ninety minutes. They had a great deal to ask of the embattled chancellor, and she fielded their myriad questions valiantly. Not one single question concerned Brexit. Not even remotely. Yes, It's that important for a nation dealing with a whole set of new problems, of more immediate relevance to the nation's voters.
As other Canadians shrugged over the palpitations of the Quebecois, so too are many Europeans bemusedly viewing the self-inflicted plight of Britain. As the business community in Montreal can ruefully reflect, with the benefit of the passage of time, mostly you don't go out with a bang, but with a whimper.