Speech sent pound soaring — no wonder the City cheered!

Just a few weeks after the Brexit vote, I was confronted by one of Britain’s most senior bankers at a social event stuffed with the nation’s business elite. the message was shrill: ‘this is a disaster. You have to help convince the Government we must stay in the single market.’

Now the banker, who has been patrolling the corridors of Whitehall with the same message ever since, has received a similarly robust response from the Prime Minister herself.

Britain will not remain part of the single market. It will not be seeking any off-the-shelf, Norway-style deals.

Nor is it interested in a customs union — imposing standardised Eu-wide import tariffs — which would limit its ability to forge independent trade deals with the world’s great economies.

theresa May’s muscular bargaining position with Brussels has been immeasurably strengthened by two factors: the imminent arrival of Donald trump in the White House; and the sparkling performance of the uK’s economy since June, which has defied all the ‘expert’ predictions of doom.

A trump presidency, we are now promised, will put Britain at the front of the queue for a trade deal — not at the back, as threatened by Barack Obama. that is enormously significant because the u.s. is Britain’s biggest single trading partner, accounting for 20 per cent of our commerce with the rest of the world, and 6 per cent of the uK’s total output.

Britain’s economy is showing a remarkable resilience in the face of Brexit beyond the wildest dreams of those who advocated that we should leave. As the International Monetary Fund revealed this week, the uK is the fastest-growing nation among the G7 richest countries in 2016, with a 2 per cent expansion.

We should also stay healthy in 2017. Indeed, confidence is so high — with consumers spending at record levels — that the governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney says he will be closely monitoring the risks to financial stability, and hinted that the next likely move in borrowing costs will be up.

Even though the weeping and wailing of chunks of the business community over Brexit has moderated in recent weeks, as it became clearer that a clean break was more likely, not all firms will be joyful at the prospect of an end to the single mar-

ket. Many small and medium-sized businesses have, over the past four decades, become closely integrated into a European supply chain, taking advantage of the four freedoms of movement — in trade, services, capital and labour.

Such companies face uncertainties, even though the Prime Minister has pledged no ‘cliffedge’ departure. But the same firms should remember they will also be free of the mountains of red tape spewing out of Brussels.

So there should be as many cheers as moans, and the most entrepreneurial and adventurous should applaud the possibility of new trade agreements with the rest of the world. Of course, there has been much angst in the City about the possibility of losing its place as Europe’s financial centre to Frankfurt or Paris. But this fear is subsiding because Mrs May insists that the best and brightest people will still be welcome here.

And City grandees have now accepted that even if so-called ‘passporting’ rights were lost — which allow our financial institutions to sell their services to EU states, and give firms in Europe access to Britain — the impact on London’s preeminence would be minimal.

More broadly, the potential cost of pulling out of the single market would be the imposition of tariffs on UK exports to the EU nations — around £5.2 billion annually, according to a new study by the think-tank Civitas.

Yet the harm would be limited because the UK would have more than enough money to compensate any affected sectors from the savings we will make in not having to contribute billions to the EU budget. Then there is the £12.9 billion which the UK would collect in tariffs on EU imports if Brussels decided to play hardball.

As far as the markets are concerned, Mrs May’s potent free trade rhetoric — and clarity on migration and future ‘customs agreements’ with nations inside and outside the EU — was received on the foreign exchanges with unalloyed joy. The pound soared, climbing 3 per cent against the dollar to $1.24, the biggest one-day rise since 2008.

The tone and content of Mrs May’s speech, particularly Britain’s determination to focus on becoming a global economic powerhouse, pleased the City. With one bound Downing Street has isolated those in Britain who were living the fantasy that the single market could be resurrected from the ashes of Brexit.

MOST significantly, Britain has called the bluff of the 27 EU nations. Since last June’s vote, there has been a stream of invective from Brussels, Paris and Berlin — and even little Malta — about the terrible consequences for the UK after it triggers Article 50.

Now she has set out her stall, the shoe is on the other foot.

Europe’s leaders will be terrified that the arguments about limiting immigration so clearly articulated by Mrs May will give succour to Right-wing parties such as Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France, which could join the UK in heading for the EU exit if Le Pen is victorious in May’s presidential election.

Such a surge in anti-Brussels sentiment could be nullified if EU leaders make some attempt to curb freedom of movement, and introduce financial reforms to head off the economic time bomb that has brought the eurozone to its knees.

But judging from the recent past, the eurocrats lack the willpower to confront internal problems any time soon. Which makes us all the more fortunate to be leaving.