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Your Sunday UK Briefing: Fireworks in the Commons; Bets on the Bank

2023-06-18 20:27
Raindrops keep falling on my head. Not really, but they will later today after Britain’s lengthy run of
Your Sunday UK Briefing: Fireworks in the Commons; Bets on the Bank

(Bloomberg) --

Raindrops keep falling on my head. Not really, but they will later today after Britain’s lengthy run of dry weather. Meanwhile, here’s what we’re looking at going into what promises to be another warm week.

The big vote: Watch for fireworks in the House of Commons on Monday, when MPs vote on punishment for Boris Johnson in the wake of the Partygate report and lashing out at the Tory-majority committee behind it. Rishi Sunak’s team insist it’s time to move on from the Westminster soap opera, but it’s unclear if anyone is listening. Meanwhile, shenanigans are spreading like a virus, with video emerging of cavorting at a 2020 lockdown shindig at the Conservative Party HQ. Cabinet minister Michael Gove said the footage would leave the citizenry feeling “extremely angry.”

The big bets: Britain’s bond market is approaching an inflection point, with inflation data and a Bank of England decision set to shape the trading outlook. The UK has the worst inflation problem in the G-7 but economists think the rate will decelerate slightly, to 8.4%, when May’s figures are released Wednesday. That report will loom large over the BOE’s Monetary Policy Committee thinking as it prepares to set rates on Thursday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey is for a quarter-point increase to 4.75%. Take a deep breath. That would be the highest since 2008.

The big debt: In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg News, Melinda French Gates is urging world leaders gathering in Paris this week to take bolder action to reform the global financial system and offer a way out of growing debt woes for the developing world. Emmanuel Macron and the Barbados PM are convening the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact on Thursday to discuss how to create a more inclusive successor to the western-led Bretton Woods institutions.

The big buys: Elsewhere in Paris, the aviation world descends on the City of Light after a four-year hiatus. Expect airlines and leasing companies to place orders, civil and military aircraft to fly in circles, and execs touting new tech like flying taxis and electric propulsion. Airbus may land a record 500-plane order with India’s IndiGo, while Boeing predicts airlines around the world will add 42,595 jets — valued at about $8 trillion — over the next two decades.

The big hope: The Labour Party has ended a boycott of the scandal-hit Confederation of British Industry in a sign of thawing relations between the lobby group and Westminster. More explicitly, Keir Starmer’s party is further boosting its business-friendly profile. Julian Harris reported on how Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds spoke with CBI Director General Rain Newton-Smith last week.

The big boat: There are more superyachts off the coast of Italy than anywhere else in the world right now. It’s safe to say the summer season is well underway for those who can flaunt it. Our Wealth team even keeps a leaderboard, taken from vessel pings, of the luxurious locations in the Med.

ICYM Our Big Take: There are serious complaints from some of the world’s biggest firms about the UK’s investment climate and investors aren’t convinced the government can jumpstart growth. “We are an extraordinarily bureaucratic country,” Terra Firma’s Guy Hands told Bloomberg TV. “The EU got blamed for bureaucracy. The reality is, we’ve left the EU and we’ve lost none of that bureaucracy. If anything, we’ve actually increased it.”

And finally, in this Bloomberg Talks podcast, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sits down with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait to discuss his life and career upon turning 100 years old. He talks about how his own worldview was shaped by what he experienced as a Jewish teenager escaping Nazi Germany and by what he saw in the concentration camps as an American soldier. Listen to the podcast on iHeart, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the Terminal.