What reputable financial organisation would choose to set up its base of operations in a country:

1) that is tiny, overcrowded, cut off from mainland Europe, and on the northern border of Africa;

2) that has no attractions at all for the kind of brilliant, high-powered employees that Lloyd’s wishes to attract;

3) where it can take an hour to cover five miles between the airport and the main office;

4) with a tiny airport with no flights to either the US, or Hong Kong and such, where it takes at least two and a half hours to get anywhere near the action on the Continent;

5) where the execs and employees will have to live away from any children because which of them would want to school their offspring in Maltese schools?

6) where you need to offset all this with the offer of a salary package so high it would make the business unprofitable.

This is not about Labour.

Lloyd’s first step in considering moving to the EU was to ‘rule out Malta’ and, worse, to declare so publicly, sounding the death knell for the financial services sector in Malta painstakingly built up over the years, with the loss of high paying jobs and consequent irreparable damage to the economy.