Oh, are you off then?

The Leave campaign repeatedly claimed that Europe needs us more than we need them. We buy more from them than they do from us, the Brexiteers said. True - but their exports make up only 8% of their total, 50% of ours are to them. The EU has the upper hand there.

The Brexit headbangers also say that we need to keep the 'no deal' option, threatening to leave without paying the bill. The money comes to 0.1% of the EU GDP. Not a very scary threat.

Even the more level-headed hope that we have some levers we can use to negotiate a reasonable deal. One lever is London's central rôle in European finance, a rôle worth €40 billion in revenues for the UK, a rôle we (hardly surprisingly) want to keep.

The problem is that non-EU banks need permission (called 'passporting rights') to provide financial services in the EU. Our negotiators will argue that removing those rights when we leave the EU will cause chaos in the EU. Unfortunately, they know this is a bluff.

Unlike the UK government, UK-based banks have been preparing for Brexit for a year already. They are not manufacturers, essentially all they need is an office with an internet connection. For example, HSBC is preparing to move 1,000 employees to Paris, JP Morgan is doubling its Irish workforce to 1,000 people, and Goldman Sachs has opened a new office in Frankfurt.

Moving the staff is disruptive, which is why senior bankers are demanding a quick deal on Brexit, so they know what they need to do. If we keep faffing around then they will have to commit to moving anyway, to avoid being caught with their trousers down. The deputy governor of the Bank of England recommends the deal needs to be sorted within the next three months.

In the long term, however, passporting is not the real issue. Once we have quit, whatever the deal, the EU will enact regulations to stem the flow of financial business, ensuring that the EU is not dependent upon UK services - it would be folly for them to have their financial security in the hands of an non-EU country.

One hope is that even without passporting rights our financial services sector can recover after the initial massive hit, which will include up to 100,000 job losses, by focusing on global finance. Passporting would be nice to have, but long term we need to build up our global financial services industry. Worryingly we have been losing global market share to the US and Asia.

London has become a honeypot, the huge amount of financial business taking place there drawing in even more business. This process could reverse, as businesses starts to leave, more follow.

To stay in the running we need to ensure that London is not hit too hard by Brexit. That means keeping the banks here. That means sorting out Brexit now.