That City A.M. link mentions Brexit once and negatively - that London is still a good place for start-ups despite Brexit. I wouldn't call that the opposite conclusion.
https://www.privateequitywire.co.uk/2021/08/25/305322/uk-bas...
UPD: some people seem to get offended so much when it comes to sheer numbers instead of a matter of opinions
The continent has actually very rapidly caught up in terms of share of money raised over recent years. In 2020, VC funding in the UK only grew by 1.7% compared to 70% in Ireland, 25% in France, 11% in Germany, Scandinavia and so on. European share of the market is actually very quickly accelerating
https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/hot-or-not-where-europea...
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/european-vc-funding-h1-2021...
growing high from significantly lower numbers always looks better in terms of % increase
I wouldn't be surprised that if the trend continue, Europeans will work even more for UK startup than they did before (i'm really tempted, i wanted to work for companies in East NA and be based in the caraibean, but Spain is at least as interesting place to live (and way cheaper) and UK salaries are very competitive, especially when considering paid leave)
When a bunch of trading barriers appear, cutting off players from participation in a market, startup opportunities will abound - that’s not surprising.
Similarly, an epidemic of window-smashing might see record VC investment in window repair startups - that hardly refutes the broken window fallacy. The signal that is ‘increased investment activity’ doesn’t necessarily point to economic health.
Yes, there continue to be lots of funding deals in London. That's something that neither supports nor contradicts your initial point that "VCs came to the opposite conclusion" – all it tells us is that the UK remains competitive regardless of Brexit.
But as "single most" - fair enough.