{"id":280448,"date":"2025-11-12T22:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T22:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/280448\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T22:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T22:24:10","slug":"politics-latest-starmer-expresses-sincere-regret-for-unfortunate-error-as-he-denies-authorising-attack-on-streeting-politics-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/280448\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics latest: Starmer expresses ‘sincere regret’ for ‘unfortunate error’ – as he denies authorising attack on Streeting | Politics News"},"content":{"rendered":"

By James Sillars, business reporter<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s fair to say there are plenty of reasons why there is a financial market focus on the UK at the moment.<\/p>\n

We have an inflation problem, a stagnant economy, a weakening labour market, a looming, punitive, budget to help fix the public finances and, now, talk that Sir Keir Starmer is facing a Labour leadership plot.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot to take in. It is destabilising and investors don\u2019t like that.<\/p>\n

While we were talking this summer about the UK’s long-term borrowing costs hitting levels last seen in the 20th century, there are signs elsewhere that all is not rosy.<\/p>\n

The pound has been hammered in recent weeks and is currently at a two-and-a-half year low against the euro.<\/p>\n

It’s good news for UK-based exporters, but if you’re planning on going abroad on holiday, your money will not go as far.<\/p>\n

On the money markets, the pound is currently trading at \u20ac1.13. In February, a pound was worth \u20ac1.21.<\/p>\n

Sterling is more than 6% down against the single European currency in the year to date and weaker against a basket of many international currencies bar the dollar, which has suffered from Trump 2.0 era uncertainty.<\/p>\n

To be fair, the euro has also traded at a premium to the US trade war-hit dollar this year, so much can be put down to euro strength rather than pure pound weakness.<\/p>\n

Why markets won’t care<\/p>\n

But Neil Wilson, UK investor strategist at Saxo Markets, said there was a cumulative uncertainty building in the UK’s outlook following briefings last night that Starmer would fight to defeat any leadership challenge.<\/p>\n

Wilson said: “It comes a week after Rachel Reeves surprised us all with a speech that said almost nothing explicitly but was seen widely \u2013 and correctly\u2026 as signalling income tax rises in the budget.<\/p>\n

“It smacks of panic in the government – to have one surprise\/bizarre briefing is a misfortune, to have two in a single week is extremely careless… We still have two weeks to go!<\/p>\n

“It points to the very real risk that the budget leads to unrest within the parliamentary Labour Party, a big market reaction, and the fall of Starmer and Reeves.<\/p>\n

“Markets won’t care that fiscal headroom is being built by tax hikes if the chancellor and PM cannot survive.<\/p>\n

“Instability with the politics means fiscal instability, which means market instability re gilts [UK bonds] – perhaps baking in a premium for an even more left-leaning, tax-and-spend government.”<\/p>\n

By the end of this month, as the budget dust settles, we will know if the markets have turned on Labour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By James Sillars, business reporter It’s fair to say there are plenty of reasons why there is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-280448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}