There are now fewer than 80 days to go until the UK is set to withdraw from the EU and it is justifiably dominating the headlines, especially given we are now only a few days away from the vote on Theresa May’s Brexit proposals. After Dominic Grieve put forward an amendment to prevent the government running down the clock, the Speaker John Bercow allowed the debate, and the amendment was voted for shortly after. It effectively means that May must present a plan B within three days if her proposals are, as expected, defeated. The next few weeks are going to be very interesting indeed.
The only economic data release from the UK was the labour productivity figures for the third quarter of 2018. As expected, it dipped by 0.4% in the three months to September, following a 0.5% growth in the previous quarter. Year-on-year, productivity increased by 0.2% which was above earlier estimates of 0.1%, However, those figures follow a 1.6% rise in the previous period and marks the weakest growth since the third quarter of 2016.
There are no releases on the economic data schedule from the UK today, but tomorrow is extremely busy, with November’s balance of trade figures scheduled for release around 9:30am. We will also see the GDP growth figures for November, construction output, and industrial and manufacturing production figures. Together, the data should give us a real sense of how the UK economy fared towards the end of last year.
