The sterling jumped in overnight
trading after Theresa May survived a coup from her party. Yesterday, pro-Brexit
MPs against her leadership secured the required 48 votes to trigger a vote of
no confidence against the prime minister. After passing all the procedures,
conservatives voted on whether they wanted her to remain as the party leader or
not. In the results reported at around 9PM, she emerged victorious with a large
margin. 200 MPs voted in support and 117 voted against her.
While this was a good enough vote
for the premier, it also exposed rifts within her party. It showed that the
divisions could continue and possibly put the country in peril when the Brexit
vote comes to parliament.
Today, she will travel to
Brussels to convince the leaders there about the need for more negotiations.
This is after the proposal she had negotiated with the EU leaders met resistance
at home. Both the public and the legislators found the deal wanting to force
her to postpone the vote.
This time however, the European
Union will likely play hard ball. After the decision to postpone the vote,
Donald Tusk welcomed the move and said that more negotiations could be made.
The EU commission chair Jean-Claude Juncker and Germany’s Angela Merkel took
opposing views. They said that there will be nothing to discuss about.
However, in a statement
yesterday, the EU seemed to reduce the tensions. In a statement, Brussels said
that, the ‘EU use its best endeavors to negotiate and conclude expeditiously a
subsequent agreement that would replace the backstop.’ They also pledged to
explore further assurances on the issue. Still, she comes to the negotiating
table from a point of weakness following the divisions within her party.
In a Bloomberg
opinion, Therese Raphael said that:
May will continue to seek concessions from the EU that might make her
deal more palatable to MPs, but there are plenty in parliament who want to see
her fail, either because they want no deal or because they want it to go to a
second referendum or, as in the case of the opposition Labour Party, new
elections. All her victory has proved is her deal has, possibly, 200
supporters – in a parliament of 650. There now comes a three-way fight.
Perhaps this was the reason why
the sterling struggled to move past the 1.2660 level. In the chart below, while
the GBP/USD pair rallied after the vote, it found strong resistance. This is
because odds of her renegotiated deal being rejected are still high. Therefore,
there is a likelihood that the pair will continue pushing downwards. The RSI
has moved from more than 80 and has fallen to 50. Therefore, there are
possibility that it will continue moving lower.
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