Category Archives: UK Politics

UK: Land of Hope & Glory…but mostly Confusion

The lyrics of Genesis’ 1986 hit “Land of Confusion” were penned over 30 years ago, with the English rock band satirising Ronald Reagan’s US presidency (see Figure 1). Specifically, they allude to the confusion fuelled by opportunist politicians in a fast-changing world beset by acute challenges. But, in my view, they portray with uncanny accuracy the UK in 2017 as Prime Minister Theresa May and her government, Parliament and the Bank of England feel their way towards Brexit. Read more

UK Election: Clutching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

With the votes having been counted for 649 of the 650-seats in the House of Commons, the ruling Conservatives have 318 seats, a net loss of 12 seats. Labour, the main opposition party, won 261 (+32).

Even if the Conservatives win the 650th seat, they will at best be 7 seats short of an absolute majority and 5 seats short of a working majority – a hung parliament.

Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the Conservatives would form an informal alliance with the Northern Irish DUP which won 10 seats. The DUP would support the Conservatives in key votes, likely in exchange for some say on government policy.

Theresa May’s future seems secure for now but medium-term I would expect her position to come under close scrutiny and a party-leadership battle remains a distinct possibility.

Sterling has weakened about 1.5% post election, in line with my and market expectations. The Conservatives’ loss of seats raises serious questions about Theresa May’s leadership, her decision to trigger early elections and the risk of a party leadership battle to oust her.

Moreover, markets will likely remain concerned about the shelf-life of a Conservative-DUP alliance and its ability to push legislation through parliament.

However, I also see scope for Sterling’s downturn to fade and even reverse in due course. To be clear, a V-shaped Sterling recovery would likely remain elusive.

Two key questions pertain to the likelihood of this new Conservative-DUP formal alliance 1) securing an advantageous EU deal and 2) opting for a “hard” or “soft” version of Brexit.

If anything, the past two months have reinforced my view that the government is ill-equipped, ill-prepared and lacking in institutional capacity to negotiate complex deals with the EU and non-EU partners.

The composition of parliament and its take on Brexit leave Theresa May in somewhat of a bind. The government may therefore have little choice but to seek support from some of the 322 opposition MPs who on the whole favour the UK remaining in the EU or at the very least a “soft” version of Brexit.

So while I do not expect a second referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, I do see a possibility of the government toning down its rhetoric and potentially opting for a softer version of Brexit – a development which UK financial markets would welcome in my view. 

At the very least, this election has further weakened the idea that nationalist parties in Europe are gaining the upper hand.

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UK General Election Scenario Analysis Impact on Policy, Theresa May and Sterling

In less than 24 hours the British electorate will start voting in the election for the 650-seat House of Commons with the result expected early in the morning of Friday 9th June.

While the last general election was only held two years ago, there is arguably as much if not more at stake this time round than in May 2015.

Opinion polls still point to the ruling Conservatives winning a record-high 44% of the national vote ahead of the opposition Labour Party, but polling agencies which in the past have misestimated true voting intentions still display great inconsistency.

Ultimately it is the number of seats which British parties command which matters and the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system makes it difficult to predict.

You Gov’s constituency-specific model forecasts the Conservatives winning only 304 seats as a result of a record number of “wasted” votes, a 26-seat loss and well short of both a working and absolute majority. Labour would increase its seat numbers from 229 to 266.

This would result in a hung parliament and either a coalition or minority government.

My own model points to the Conservatives winning around 360 seats (55.4% of total) and Labour 212 seats. Admittedly, this prediction is based on a number of assumptions, namely the net share of votes which Conservatives gain from other parties as well as voter turnout.

Whether the Conservatives significantly improve on their current 330 seats or fail to secure a parliamentary majority remains a tough call and there is an almost infinite number of possible outcomes.

However, I have narrowed down in Figure 10 the number of seats the Conservatives could win to eight possible scenarios, in each case assessing i) Their probability; ii) Their numerical impact on the Conservatives’ majority (or lack thereof); and iii) The risk of opposition parties and/or Conservative backbenchers high-jacking the policy agenda.

Figure 11 assesses for each of the eight scenarios their likely impact on iv) Theresa May’s standing within the Conservative Party and v) Sterling and currency volatility.

Regardless of what happens tomorrow, two events beyond British shores also scheduled for 8th June – the ECB’s policy meeting and Former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee – will conceivably exacerbate Sterling volatility.
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UK Election Special – When Two Tribes Go To War

British voters will on Thursday 8th June vote on the composition of the 650-seat House of Commons – the third major popular vote in two years – after Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision back in April to trigger early general elections.

Theresa May’s motivations were arguably four-fold: (1) Win a popular rather than party mandate, (2) Capitalise on the massive lead in the polls the ruling Conservatives enjoyed over the opposition Labour Party and thus allow her to push through her own agenda, including a possibly softer form of Brexit, (3) Allow the government more time to secure a new EU trade deal, and (4) Strengthen the government’s stance in negotiations with the EU.

Objectives (1) and (3) will likely be met but objectives (2) and (4) may prove more elusive.

Opinion polls point to a trend-fall in popular support for the Conservatives to around 44% and sharp rise for Labour to 35%, with the gap between the two main parties halving to about 9pp from 20pp six weeks ago. Aggregate support for the Liberal Democrats, UKIP, SNP and Green Party is flat-lining around 18%.

However, there is still great discrepancy amongst polling agencies which in the past have misestimated true voting intentions. Moreover the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system makes it difficult to translate share of votes into seat numbers. Whether the Conservatives significantly improve on their current 330 seats or fail to secure a parliamentary majority, as You Gov currently predicts, is a tough call.

Nevertheless, a number of important themes have emerged in recent months.

First, the slingshot campaign has exposed the frailty and flaws of the Conservative machine, including of its leader and manifesto, and reinforced my view, first set out in December, that the government is ill-equipped, ill-prepared and lacking in institutional capacity to negotiate complex deals with the EU and non-EU partners.

Second, it is a two-horse race between the ruling Conservatives and Labour, with the other parties on course to secure only a modest number of seats – a break with recent elections.

Finally, the political centre of gravity has shifted to the left, with in particular tax rates likely to rise regardless of which party wins next week’s election.

My core scenario is a hollow victory for the Conservatives: 360-370 seats with a low voter turnout. This would reduce the risk of opposition parties and rebel Conservative MPs torpedoing government legislation but would fall short of the landslide victory which Conservatives thought possible back in April.

Finally, a modest (or even significant) increase in the Conservatives’ parliamentary majority is unlikely to materially improve the government’s hand when negotiating with the EU.

 

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UK inching towards Brexit

British Prime Minister Theresa May will make a speech on Tuesday 17th January in which she will set out in greater details her plans for the UK’s exit from the EU.

There have been few signs that she is willing to tone down her mantra of the UK regaining control over immigration in exchange for a bespoke trading deal with the EU which may exclude access to the Single Market.

If Theresa May sticks to her guns next week I would expect Sterling to weaken further.

A sell-off in Sterling could be partly curbed if Prime Minister May agrees more explicitly to a transition agreement whereby the UK still retains some of the benefits of EU membership even after the UK has officially left the EU.

If MPs perceive Theresa May’s speech as insufficiently detailed or it is not backed up with a detailed and formal government white paper, parliament may decide to delay or even scupper the process by which Article 50 is triggered.

This would at the margin increase the perceived odds of the UK remaining in the EU and may provide some relief for Sterling.

However, I would view this as only a temporary reprieve as ultimately the government has a popular mandate for the UK to leave the EU.

The apparent resilience of British economic growth since the June referendum has given weight to the arguments that the economy can easily weather the UK’s exit from the EU and that the British government is in a strong negotiating position.

However, the risk now is perhaps that too much confidence is being placed in the British economy’s ability to weather a number of possible forthcoming challenges. Read more

The A-Team had a plan, the British government has a nebulous goal

The UK has its own eclectic A-Team led by Prime Minister May, tasked with getting the UK out of the EU and securing a more beneficial relationship with trading partners.

Theresa May, David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson have been dealt a tough hand and unsurprisingly have so far refused to reveal the intricate details of their daring plan.

But voters, businesses, parliament, EU leaders and foreign trading partners are pressing the government to elaborate on its tactics and strategies for Brexit.

There was break-through of sorts on 7th December, with the 650 members of the House of Commons (MPs) voting overwhelmingly to allow the government to trigger Article 50 by end-March in exchange for publishing the details of its Brexit plan.

But the devil is in the detail – or lack thereof. This parliamentary vote is not binding and the government has only agreed in the vaguest of terms to publish its plan for Brexit.

If MPs receive the plan late in the game and/or it is insufficiently detailed and assuming the Supreme Court rules that government has no prerogative to trigger Article 50, parliament may decide to delay or even scupper the process by which Article 50 is triggered.

Moreover, this likely vote in the House of Commons and House of Lords may well be only one of multiple votes which parliament has to hold between now and the approval of a final treaty between the UK and the EU.

In addition to these possible parliamentary hurdles, the government may also have to navigate a number of pending legal cases.

Some of these parliamentary votes may not take place and these legal actions may fail. There is certainly scope for further compromise between Theresa May’s government and parliament.

But the risk is that this reputation-sapping cat-and-mouse game extends beyond March, in turn making it far more difficult to predict the end-outcome – which ranges from the UK reverting to WTO rules (the “hardest” form of Brexit) to the UK staying in the EU.

Given the uncertain path which British executive and legislative bodies will take to reach a difficult-to-predict outcome at an unidentifiable point in the future, forecasting Sterling remains fraught with difficulty.

In this context I would expect Sterling to continue lacking direction near-term, particularly as the FX market has, it would seem, already priced out the more negative scenarios for the UK economy. Mixed UK data may not provide Sterling with much direction either way.

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So much change – so little difference

Events, data and price action in recent days have provided much debate and if anything reinforce my view that volatility in asset prices is unlikely to be tamed any time soon (see Be careful what you wish for, 1 November 2016). The odds of Donald Trump winning next week’s US presidential elections have gone up, the probability of the UK opting for hard Brexit has come down, US data have been mixed and global yields and equities have come off. But ultimately I do not think the underlying picture has changed as much. Read more

Sterling: The lady’s not for turning (yet!)

There are multiple factors behind Sterling’s collapse in the past fortnight to decade lows and the question remains whether these factors will reverse any time soon.

At the top of the pyramid of causes for Sterling’s demise, in my view, is not the UK’s large current account deficit or Bank of England (BoE) policy but the stance on EU membership which Prime Minister Theresa May has adopted.

So while Sterling’s greater competitiveness may eventually drive FX inflows into the UK and help Sterling to recover, financial markets and investors are likely to continue to take their cue from the British government near-term.

Simply put, if Theresa May continues down of the path of “Hard Brexit”, however ill-defined, Sterling is likely to remain under pressure.

However, history shows that while EU leaders have a tendency to drag their feet over key issues, they are able and willing to eventually find some kind of compromise.

Moreover, Theresa May will be subject to the will of her own Conservative Party – which on the whole supports membership of the UK or at least a softer form of exit from the EU – and of the people.

While the BoE would prefer a more stable currency and lower yields, there is probably little than it can (or should) do near-term beyond trying to reassure markets, investors and households. Read more

Post Referendum Circular Reference

It has been a fortnight since the UK electorate voted to leave the EU and the British political and financial landscape has already changed dramatically. But what we don’t know or can only tentatively forecast still dwarfs what we know.

The referendum result simply reflected a popular preference for the UK to leave an international organisation, nothing less, nothing more. There is no precedent for UK and EU leaders to rely on and Article 50 is at best only a very skinny rule book.

For all intents and purposes UK and EU leaders are flying blind. It’s not even obvious who is at the controls, let alone who will lead negotiations on behalf of the EU and in particular the UK following seismic changes in political personnel.

The next steps are thus anything but straightforward and the UK government and EU are currently caught in a prisoner’s dilemma, with none of the key players seemingly willing to make the first move.

The referendum result is not legally-binding, only advisory, and therefore the Lower House of Parliament will likely have to vote on whether to trigger Article 50. But the British government has so far provided only a vague wishlist and simply doesn’t know what the EU may or may not agree to.

Parliament will not want to kick start an almost irreversible process whereby the UK has announced a divorce but doesn’t know the terms and conditions of this divorce, let alone what its new relationship will look like. Unsurprisingly, the British government is playing for time.

But EU leaders have suggested that discussions about the UK’s exit from the EU and future trade agreements were conditional on the UK government first triggering Article 50. And that takes us back to square one.

When this deadlock is broken will depend on many variables, including the length of the stalemate itself, who is in charge at the point of making a decision and the ability and willingness of negotiating parties with different vested interests to compromise.

I would argue that the longer this stalemate lasts, the greater the likely damage to the UK and EU economies and the greater the odds that Article 50 is not triggered in the first place or that a mutually satisfactory deal is eventually reached. Early British general elections cannot be discounted, nor can a second referendum in a more extreme scenario.

Assuming that the current circular reference paralysing EU and UK leaders is unbroken near-term, the associated uncertainty will likely continue to weigh on the UK economy, sterling and global risk appetite. Whether this morphs into a deeper and more widespread crisis may boil down to how patient global financial markets are willing to be. Read more

UK referendum: Blame the weather, not Brussels

The outcome of today’s crucial UK referendum on EU membership will partly depend on how many of the 46.5 million registered voters cast their postal votes and turn up today at voting booths which opened at 07.00 (UK time) and will close at 22:00.

Opinions polls have concluded that a lower voter turnout today would favour the Leave vote while a higher turnout would favour the Remain vote. 

But intentions to vote are not the same as actually ticking the ballot box. Bad weather is more likely to keep people at home and turnout low, favouring the Leave vote while dry weather would in theory encourage people to vote, in turn favouring the Remain camp.

There have so far today been scattered showers across the UK and the Met Office has issued an amber weather warning for the East of England, London and South-East England, with predictions of thundery showers throughout the day.

However, the Financial Times is reporting that in many parts of London there are long queues at several polling stations and the Met Office is forecasting largely dry and cloudy weather elsewhere in the UK.

It is somewhat ironic that the unpredictable British weather, a favourite topic of conversation, could potentially change the British economic landscape for years to come.

The consensus expectation is that if the UK votes to remain in the EU, sterling, UK equities and to an extent the euro and global equities will rally sharply. But this rally could start to fade after a few days, as markets refocus on global data and events and the British turn their attention to the all-important matter of the Euro 2016 championships and perennial question of whether Andy Murray can win a second Wimbledon title.  

But acute uncertainty and market volatility would likely persist for weeks and potentially months should the leave camp win today’s referendum, particularly if it wins by only a very narrow margin and/or turnout is low. Read more

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