UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Mansion House speech yesterday delivered the final coup de grace headshot to any lingering hopes for EU-UK equivalence.

“The UK has an abiding interest in a prosperous and productive Europe. We have deep shared values and a long history of cooperation. And we will strengthen those ties. At the same time, as I said in Parliament in November, our ambition had been to reach a comprehensive set of mutual decisions on financial services equivalence. That has not happened. Now, we are moving forward, continuing to cooperate on questions of global finance, but each as a sovereign jurisdiction with our own priorities. We now have the freedom to do things differently and better, and we intend to use it fully.” Rishi Sunak

The speech goes on to laud the existing UK-US trade relationship, and to promote the untapped potential of China’s £40 trillion total assets, accompanied by the typical paean to UK innovation and technology leadership.

The full chancellors speech is on the government website here, and a commentary is on the DRS ALS website here.