The Brits Call it Quits
British lawmakers may be on their summer holidays now, but with the country’s politics up in flames, it’ll be business as usual when they return to London. Government is officially pausing all operations!
Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to press the reset button on his party’s plans for the UK, and rewrite them his way. The standard custom for this is to suspend the government for a brief period. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again. No biggie! Actually, there’s an issue with the timing. Brexit needs sorting out one way or another, and a Queen’s Speech scheduled for October 14th will leave it to the eleventh hour!
The rafts of pre-historic parliamentary protocol will take their time to buff out, but ultimately leave Boris with only a couple of weeks before the do-or-die deadline of October 31st. At the close of play on that deadline day, the UK either leaves with a deal to cushion its European departure or crashes out of the group amid confused screaming from investors. In sum, less time to flesh out a deal means more chance of no deal at all. That prospect markets briefly worried yesterday when this news broke.
Since then, however, more investors have started to believe crunch time won’t begin until October 31st itself. Both the Brits and the European Union are in the same car, driving towards a sheer cliff edge into the unknown. It’ll only be at the last minute when the blinking contest gets serious between the two sides. Neither wants to compromise, pump the breaks, and end up looking weak in front of the millions of citizens they represent (who are sat clenched in the backseats). Who knows how this will end? Got a hunch? Test it in the markets!
