But it's the financial services that have drag this country down as it centred wealth creation around London, the financial centre of Britian, with branches in other major towns, leaving the rest of the country behind.
Also, Ireland is a tax haven with low corporation tax of 12.5% , that many remain remainers cried about the UK becoming like this. Most of the left and remainers would be frothing at the mouth with rage, if a Tory government did this.
I would guess there is more to those figures than it first seems.
The financial services sector formed around London being a major trading hub, not the other way around. London has been the centre of British economy since Roman times.
A lot is made about the financial services sector in the UK, but it's really about our excellence in International trade in general, not just finance, but our world leading accounting and legal sectors.
That's why they were never going to be able to move the majority of euro clearing work away from London after Brexit without destroying the euro as a global currency. It is quite simple, if a transaction is cleared in London, the transaction is carried out in English law. Lots of major trade and finance centres around the world are English law jurisdictions. The accounting is done by a UK accountancy firm. If there's a dispute, it will be settled in an English court.
If you're an American, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Brazilian business conducting a euro-denominated transaction, do you want that transaction to be dealt with in French or German and governed by notoriously bat-brick French courts, or an obscure and complex federal legal.system in Germany you aren't familiar with? Or do you want everything in English, governed by a law you're familiar with, under the jurisdiction of reliable English courts? To the present day its still (post-Brexit) a no-brainer.
As to the "finance jobs" and the "something else going on" you're alluding to, most articles and analysis written by "remainers" focus on one half of a consequence of Brexit: which is the end of *passporting*. I.e. British banks and FS companies can no longer use an FCA licence to service continental European customers. They've had to become regulated in an EU jurisdiction and that means establishing lots of head office functions in an EU state. It is these figures that people quote when they talk about "finance jobs lost to the UK". But you see none of these jobs are, in fact, "lost" for the most part, because that would assume all of these finance companies in the UK that wanted to continue servicing continental Europe did not want to remain authorised to service the UK market. The more accurate picture is that these jobs were brand new jobs created in Europe due to Brexit. What these analysts never mention is the flip side: that every European finance company servicing the UK had to become authorised and regulated over here to continue doing so, which they all did. They had to set up UK registered companies, create a head office and servicing function in the UK and move a tonne of regulatory capital over to the UK. Jobs were created in the UK financial sector on an industrial scale due to Brexit. And in fact, as per that mayor of City of London's analysis and the chart I've posted, the financial services sector in the UK has experienced rapid growth since Brexit.
