If Samuel Beckett were alive today, the UK's efforts to extricate itself from membership of the European Union might have lent themselves to a worthy theatrical sequel called, say, Waiting for Brexit.

This week's vote in parliament, if it goes ahead, will be but one chapter of a dramatic process to determine Britain's future– and Beckett's talent for dark humour seems to have permeated even the prosaic milieu of the City.‎ At a meeting hastily convened last week by Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, more than a dozen of London's leading private equity investors traipsed to Whitehall to be encouraged to invest more capital in UK deals.