LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) – British markets came under renewed selling pressure on Thursday after a key member of the UK government quit his post, raising speculation about a leadership challenge to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s position and \u200crenewed political instability.<\/p>\n
British health minister Wes Streeting resigned from government, saying he had lost confidence in Starmer’s leadership.<\/p>\n
Sterling edged lower \u200cand was last down 0.1% around $1.351, while benchmark 10-year gilt yields held lower on the day, and were last down nearly 5 basis points at 5.02%.<\/p>\n
COMMENTS:<\/p>\n
NICK REES, \u200bHEAD OF MACRO RESEARCH, MONEX EUROPE, LONDON:<\/p>\n
“It moves us one step closer to a Labour leadership challenge. How many steps are between here and there that’s still uncertain. It’s notable that in Streeting’s letter he expressed a preference for a wide field in the leadership election. The 30,000-foot view is you have a drawn-out contest and persistent uncertainty weighing on sterling.”<\/p>\n
KENNETH BROUX, HEAD OF CORPORATE RESEARCH FX AND RATES, SOCIETE \u200cGENERALE, LONDON:<\/p>\n
“In terms of the candidates, for sterling \u2060and gilts, he (Streeting) is going to be the most favoured, he’s going to keep with the fiscal rules, pro-EU, doesn’t pose a threat to further deterioration of the public finances.<\/p>\n
But if you look at market \u2060moves this week the politics are in there and in the background but it’s more about the Fed and inflation<\/p>\n
When you look at 10-year gilts — 30 year can be illiquid so I don’t look at them — in terms of the 10-year, UK gilts are 1\/1.5 (bps) wider than U.S. \u200bin the \u200bpast week. The (UK) politics have been secondary to U.S. inflation this week.”<\/p>\n
PHILIP \u200bSHAW, CHIEF ECONOMIST, INVESTEC, LONDON:<\/p>\n
“Wes Streeting’s resignation represents a \u200cnew chapter in the level of uncertainty in the UK. And one presumes that he’s got the 81 votes behind him necessary to issue a formal challenge to the Prime Minister.<\/p>\n
Of course, the wider question is how many other candidates will enter the field. Who’s going to get down to the last two and out of those who is going to win? And that’s a very difficult question at the moment because we don’t know who the other entrants are going to be.”<\/p>\n
“The big question is that the markets \u200cwant to know how does this leave the direction of fiscal policy. It \u200bcertainly opens up a huge amount of uncertainty, but we honestly don’t know \u200byet. At the moment, there are a lot of questions, \u200bnot a whole lot of answers.”<\/p>\n
CHRIS SCICLUNA, HEAD OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, DAIWA CAPITAL MARKETS, LONDON:<\/p>\n
“We have to \u200cwait and see who we ultimately get, assuming there \u200bis a challenge.”<\/p>\n
“Clearly there’s a lot \u200bof uncertainty about where policy will go but it’s not necessarily the case that UK fiscal policy will be set on any reckless path going forward.”<\/p>\n
“Streeting is not clear how much fiscal loosening his leadership might imply and nor would we \u200bsee Streeting as being the favourite. We don’t \u200crule out Starmer withstanding the challenge, either.”<\/p>\n
“The war in Iran and rising energy costs mean bond markets broadly could \u200bcome under pressure. At the margin, we expect gilts and sterling to underperform in the short term.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by the \u200bReuters Marksts Team; Compiled by Dhara Ranasinghe; Editing by Amanda Cooper)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) – British markets came under renewed selling pressure on Thursday after a key member…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16502,94,14299,27,5,1261,17002,6,4108],"class_list":{"0":"post-36270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-gilts","9":"tag-keir-starmer","10":"tag-leadership-challenge","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-uk-government","14":"tag-uncertainty","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wes-streeting"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116573200865817091","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}