Dirty money: Mrs May should be grateful to the EU

Much has been made of the fact that if the ERG has its way, the UK will leave the EU without the latest directive against money-laundering being imposed on us. However, it appears that the EU has been kind to London, which some commentators have described as the dirty money capital of the world. Earlier this month, the Commission published "an expanded blacklist of 23 countries it believes are failing to address a high risk of money laundering or terrorist financing". As the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) blog points out, this blacklist carefully restricts itself to "third countries", i.e. those outside the EU. Estonia and possibly Luxembourg should be in the frame, but so also the UK which in terms of sheer volume of money flowing is the biggest sinner.

So leaving the EU without a deal will enable the UK to continue the lax regulation begun by Gordon Brown and continued under the Conservatives, but will also render us liable to be fingered in a later update of the EU's blacklist.