Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire

by Danny Dorling

The evidence for this was under the Lord Chancellor’s backside. The Lord Chancellor was supposed to sit on a wool bale known as the Woolsack, a symbol of the wool trade’s importance to the English economy. In 1938, when it was becoming a little uncomfortable to sit on, it was discovered that the Woolsack had most recently been stuffed with horsehair. It was re-stuffed with wool from all over the Commonwealth, apparently ‘as a symbol of unity’.32 It turns out that sheep can live almost anywhere, and wool is gathered in a great many countries. If there was ever a symbol that comparative advantage doesn’t work, then the Woolsack has to be it. Just as sheep can live almost anywhere, banking can be done almost anywhere. There is nothing special about the clay soil of London that makes it especially suited to banking.