Jim Armitage: Cabinet reshuffle leaves Square Mile at the bottom of the pack

The City has most to lose from Brexit, yet its concerns seem to be taken less seriously in Westminster than practically any other industry’s.

Financial services are the biggest contributor to UK taxes, paying for more schools and hospitals than any other sector.

Yet we are still to get a position paper from the government explaining what our Brexit negotiators hope to achieve for them. Positions on defence, science, agriculture, have all been outlined in no fewer than 14 papers so far, yet still there has been nothing on the City.

Likewise, we have no clear response from the government on the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s stance that financial services cannot be part of a free trade agreement being negotiated in the coming weeks. More uncertainty for our most successful industry.

As we highlight in today's Evening Standard, Treasury select committee chairman Nicky Morgan has asked twice for some sort of position paper but received inadequate responses. So, our banks, insurers and fund managers are still planning for 2019 in the dark.

If you’re getting the feeling that nobody in government is batting for the Square Mile, you’d be right. In this week’s reshuffle, we got our 11th City minister in 10 years. Stephen Barclay, in the post for just seven months, is off to Health to be replaced by John Glen, from Arts, Heritage and Tourism.

Barclay may have been out of step with most of the City by being a Vote Leave campaigner, but at least he once worked for his namesake, Barclays. The bloke before him, Simon Kirby, was deemed “not up to the job” by senior City figures and ended up being stripped of half the job before losing his seat in the Election.

The disdain Downing Street seems to have for this merry-go-round post suggests it is still in banker-bashing mode, fearing being seen to pander to the City’s needs. Those days should be over: Brexit Britain needs its financial services exporters more than ever.

If you thought City ministers were short-lived, look at housing.

Despite being in charge of perhaps the biggest problem voters face today — the difficulty of affording a roof over their head — the housing minister has just been swapped for the third time in seven months.

You can see why builders such as Taylor Wimpey’s Pete Redfern get the hump. Reasons for the housing shortage are complicated, requiring deep understanding of interconnected issues, from planning to council house policy, to the Green Belt. It needs long-term, considered thought.

Constant changes in ministers lead to sticking plaster fixes that end up doing more harm than good.