The regulatory bonfires that Trump has planned pose a threat to British lenders' ability to compete.

Despite Donald Trump's most anarchic tendencies, optimists are confident that the "special relationship" between the US and the UK will endure. However, due to the dominance of US libertarianism and the more paternalistic UK government, our governing ideologies and fortunes are now quite different, at least in the near term.

The banking industry is the one place where that is most noticeable. Think about how the largest banks in the nation have performed in the last few weeks. The stock market has been booming. Since the November 5 election, the share prices of all the major US banks have increased by double digits, with Goldman Sachs leading the way at 15%.

Several drivers are involved. Profits would increase with promised tax cuts. So may an increase in oil drilling. Trump's deregulatory policy, however, will be the greatest victory of all. The architects of the so-called Basel III endgame were already compelled to dilute planned capital and liquidity standards in September by the strong US banking lobby (who even used direct appeals to the public via football game advertising slots to emphasize their message). The revised plan is still very similar to the international Basel model and makes some progress in addressing the regulatory flaws that were revealed when Silicon Valley Bank and other banks collapsed last year. However, there is currently a general belief that these weakened regulations will also be abandoned.

Trump has made a clear commitment to "slash" all regulations in the interest of efficiency. For the banks, this probably means fewer stringent regulators and a simpler framework for mergers and acquisitions they advise on, in addition to the removal of the new Basel regulations.

There is no more glaring contrast with the fate of UK banks. The values of UK banks are already significantly lower than those of their US counterparts because of their smaller size and weaker economy. But last month, the shares of a number of lenders plummeted after a surprise Court of Appeal decision that ruled that previous car loan commission payments were illegal.