Don't forget that the consumer benefits from a voluntary transaction

If we go and buy something, voluntarily, then we must do so because that thing we are buying is of benefit to us. It is also logically obvious that we consider that thing we’ve bought to be of greater benefit to us than the other things that we could have gained with those same resources we are giving up to gain it.

The consumer benefits from whatever it is she buys.

EU threatens to cut off City unless it gets answers over regulation after Brexit

Well, yes, but who is it getting cut off?

Brussels will refuse the City of London access to the EU's market

No, that’s not correct.

We need to avoid being overly dependent on a third [non-EU] country for key financial services, Ms McGuinness told MEPs before calling for the bloc to build up its financial infrastructure.

From that we can derive what is correct. The consumers - all those about to be remnant-EU companies and consumers of financial services - are about to be cut off from their suppliers in the City of London. Which does sound like a rather silly thing to be doing given that imports are the very purpose of having trade in the first place.

Under the current regulatory dispensation financial services across the EU are a close approximation to a properly free market - at least in so far as the geographic location of the supplier is concerned. The idea that consumers should be cut off from their preferred supplier for indeterminate political reasons is just so absurd that of course that is what the political system is about to provide.