BORIS Johnson’s willingness to crash the UK out of the European Union with no deal has left the pound plummeting to a near-three-year low.
In Edinburgh Airport, at the International Currency Exchange, The National was offered just €90 for £104, around 86 cents to the pound.
Sterling has been in near free-fall since the weekend, when Michael Gove said the UK Government was now operating on the assumption that the UK would be leaving the EU without an agreement on October 31.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson too chicken to debate independence with First Minister
The markets had, so far, regarded that eventuality as relatively unlikely.
But with the government ploughing full steam ahead, panicking investors have been shifting their currency, and the pound has shed around 2.4% of its value.
Yesterday, it had its worst monthly performance against the US dollar since October 2016, down to $1.21. In May, it was at $1.32, and before the EU referendum it was at $1.50.
Speaking on the BBC’s World At One, the former Goldman Sachs economist and former Treasury minister Jim O’Neill said currency traders were having a “free lunch”.
He said: “I’m pretty sure a lot of big foreign exchange and hedge fund-type people have had a pretty tricky life for the past few years for a whole host of reasons and they are probably looking at what’s being said coming out of the UK as almost close to a free lunch – that you’ve got a government that is deliberately promoting the no-deal risk, and one that is talking so adventurously, let’s call it, about monetary and fiscal policy too.
“The world I was in, a lot of them are saying, ‘Thank goodness for Boris, he’s giving us a chance to make some money.”
Meanwhile, Johnson clashed with the Irish leader Leo Varadkar, above, when the two men spoke for the first time since the Tory moved into Number 10. The Prime Minister told the Taoiseach that while he will approach Brexit negotiations in “a spirit of friendship” the backstop must go.
Varadkar insisted the measure, which aims to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland was “necessary as a consequence” of Brexit.
A Number 10 spokeswoman said: “The Prime Minister made clear that the government will approach any negotiations which take place with determination and energy, and in a spirit of friendship, and that his clear preference is to leave the EU with a deal, but it must be one that abolishes the backstop.”
Dublin said Varadkar reiterated the EU position that Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement would not be renegotiated.
“On Brexit, the Taoiseach emphasised to the Prime Minister that the backstop was necessary as a consequence of decisions taken in the UK and by the UK Government,” a spokesman said. “Alternative arrangements could replace the backstop in the future, as envisaged in the Withdrawal Agreement and the political declaration on the future relationship but, thus far, satisfactory options have yet to be identified and demonstrated.”
The Taoiseach also invited Johnson to Dublin to “further their respective analyses on Brexit”, Ireland said.
Johnson is currently unwilling to sit down with EU leaders until they agree to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement.
Sinn Fein said the Prime Minister would need to call a border poll rather than let there be a hard border in Ireland.
Leader Mary Lou McDonald, who is due to meet Johnson this week, said she will remind him of his “obligations under the Good Friday and subsequent agreements including the provision for a unity referendum”.
“If the British Government has factored into its calculations a hard border, then it must factor in a unity referendum as laid out in the Good Friday Agreement,” she said. “The route back for the North into the EU is clear. Irish unity is the route back to the EU.”
Johnson was in Wales yesterday, promising that British farmers would be better off even under a no-deal Brexit. But Helen Roberts, development officer for the National Sheep Association in Wales, said no deal would be “absolutely catastrophic” and could even lead to civil unrest among sheep producers.
“I think it’s time to come and stand up for ourselves and be counted,” she said.
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