That’s the cry uttered by Alex Brummer, the UK Daily Mail’s excellent City Editor on the parlous negotiating position of the London Stock Exchange.

In a rallying exhortation to the Great and the Good of the Square Mile and beyond, Brummer duffs up the instigators of the current situation :

That the LSE should have become a pawn rather than a knight in a fight to unify the world’s bourses under global brands is madness. It ought to be in the driving seat of the consolidation.”

This website says Amen to that.

Consider for a moment the advantages currently possessed by the LSE. It’s Europe’s largest cash market. This week it overtook New York in cash raised for IPOs. In AIM, it owns the most vigorous enterprise market in the world.

Brummer writes : “London’s acceleration away from all its rivals post Big Bang in 1986 and Britain’s emergence from the shadow of euroland is one of the great success stories of the 20th century. … The latest trading statement underpins the case for keeping the LSE independent and British-owned.”

With the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, and Treasury Secretary, Ed Balls, seeming to climb aboard the bandwagon, Alex Brummer is surely right to say :

“We must Save our Stock Exchange.”