CITY AND SUBURBAN
That balancing item turns out to be £25 billion, so this week it's City and Palatial
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Achange of style this week: it's City and Palatial. The Queen spent a busy day in the City on Wednesday, and in the evening asked some of its citizens and denizens back to the Palace: 'a reception' (as the card explained) 'to mark the contribution of the City to the financial services indus- try.' It has taken some marking. When I came to the City its overseas earnings were dismissed as a statistical anomaly. The trade figures came out month by month and in some months set markets and minis- ters reaching for the panic button. The fig- ures for the balance of payments would come out later and would look much better. The difference between them was then called a balancing item. It was left to William Clarke to point out that the trade figures measured the import and export of goods, and that Britain had run a trade deficit all through its heyday as the work- shop of the world and right back to 1797. Luckily we were good at exporting services. This got him commissioned by the Bank to set up a committee on these 'invisible' exports and try to make them more visible. We can now see that they bring us in a net £25 billion a year. We can also see Robert Maxwell's proverbial one-eyed Albanian could see — that the City has no God-given right to them and that its com- petitors are the least of its worries.
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