jeremy corbyn
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FILE PHOTO: A man is seen in front of an electronic board showing stock information on the first day of trading in the Year of the Pig, following the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, at a brokerage house in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer
April 3, 2019
By Andrew Galbraith
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Asian shares hovered near seven-month highs early on Wednesday as global investors paused for breath after the strong rally seen earlier this week, while oil approached the key $70 per barrel mark.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up less than 0.1 percent early in the Asian trading day. The index jumped more than 1 percent on Monday on data showing a return to growth for Chinese factory activity, while investor sentiment was further bolstered by improvements in U.S. manufacturing and construction spending.
The benchmark inched up to a seven-month high on Tuesday amid a global run of gains that has pushed MSCI’s key gauge of global equities to a six-month high. The global index was up less than 0.1 percent on Wednesday morning, following small gains on Wall Street overnight.
Australian shares were up 0.6 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei stock index added 0.2 percent.
On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3 percent to 26,179.13 points, the S&P 500 was flat and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.25 percent to 7,848.69.
“After such a strong rise it is no surprise that the risk rally stalled a little,” Greg McKenna, strategist at McKenna Macro.
The consolidation in risk sentiment was reflected on Wednesday in easing yields U.S. Treasury yields.
Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes yielded 2.4706 percent, down from a U.S. close of 2.479 percent on Tuesday. The two-year yield, watched as a proxy for expectations of Fed rate rises, touched 2.2983 percent compared with a U.S. close of 2.308 percent.
Oil prices also stood near multi-month highs amid concerns over supply, with Brent crude up 0.45 percent at $69.68, close to its highest level so far in 2019 and near the key level of $70 per barrel.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was flat at $62.57 a barrel.
News that the United States is considering more sanctions against Iran, the fourth-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the halting of production at a crude terminal in Venezuela threaten to squeeze supply and pushed oil prices up on Tuesday.
In currency markets, the pound was flat at $1.3127, having recovered its footing after British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would seek another delay to Brexit to work out an EU divorce deal with opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The dollar was down a hair against the yen to 111.27 and the euro was unchanged at $1.1202.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, was down less than 0.1 percent at 97.289.
Gold was slightly lower, with spot gold trading at $1,291.31 per ounce. [GOL/]
(Reporting by Andrew Galbraith; Editing by Sam Holmes)
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FILE PHOTO – Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives at the European Commission headquarters ahead of a meeting with European Union’s Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels, Belgium March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville
March 25, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – A man who hit Britain’s opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn on the head with an egg in an attack apparently provoked by the politician’s stance on Brexit was sentenced to 28 days in jail on Monday.
Closed circuit television footage showed John Murphy, 31, approach Corbyn, who was visiting a Muslim community center in London’s Finsbury Park on March 3 with his wife and supporters, and crack the egg on the side of his head.
“Although Mr Corbyn was not seriously hurt, Murphy had come with a number of eggs that he could have used had he not been detained quickly,” Kevin Christie, District Crown Prosecutor at CPS London North.
Prosecutors said Murphy shouted “respect the vote”, an apparent reference to the 2016 EU referendum result. The attack occurred days after Corbyn, 69, had said his Labour party would support a second referendum if it could not get backing for its alternative Brexit plans.
Murphy, who pleaded guilty, was jailed for 28 days and made to pay a 115-pound ($152) victim surcharge.
“Whilst I am in a very public role, it is often very painful to see my wife, my sons and my wider family suffer deep stress because of my role and because of this attack upon me,” Corbyn said in a statement read out in court.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by David Clarke)
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Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks to the media after a meeting with European Union’s Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels, Belgium March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman
March 21, 2019
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – British Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said after meeting the EU’s Brexit negotiator that he will push ahead with Brexit and seek to renegotiate the terms of the divorce deal.
Corbyn’s meeting with Michel Barnier on Thursday came as Prime Minister Theresa May is struggling to get her divorce deal through parliament and has asked the EU for an extension to negotiations.
“Our determination is to find an agreement, which means we prevent a no-deal Brexit, and that we have a future constructive relationship with the European Union that could be negotiated during an extension period,” Corbyn told reporters.
He added: “This morning’s meetings have been positive and we have done what I believe the government ought to be doing, which is instead of bringing back a twice-rejected deal to the British parliament, looking for a constructive alternative.”
(Reporting By Elizabeth Piper. Writing by Andrew MacAskill; editing by Stephen Addison)
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Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks to the media outside New Zealand House, following Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand, in London, Britain March 15, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
March 21, 2019
(Reuters) – British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will travel to Brussels on Thursday to discuss an “alternative” Brexit plan with European Union (EU) leaders, including the bloc’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, his party said in a statement.
Corbyn will express confidence that an alternative to Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal can be agreed in the UK parliament, the Labour Party said.
Corbyn will also meet the Secretary-General of the European Commission, Martin Selmayr, and hold talks with prime ministers of seven EU countries including Spanish Premier Pedro Sanchez.
(Reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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FILE PHOTO: Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at church in Sonning, Britain March 17, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
March 18, 2019
By Guy Faulconbridge and Elizabeth Piper
LONDON (Reuters) – One of the most influential Brexit-backing lawmakers in Prime Minister Theresa May’s party gave the strongest hint to date on Monday that rebels might back her departure deal, saying that a bad exit accord was better than staying in the European Union.
May has warned lawmakers that unless they approve her Brexit divorce deal after two crushing defeats, Britain’s exit from the EU could face a long delay which many Brexiteers fear would mean Britain may never leave.
After two-and-a-half years of tortuous negotiations with the EU, the final outcome remains uncertain – with options including a long delay, exiting with May’s deal, a disorderly exit without a deal or even another EU membership referendum.
May is scrambling to rally support ahead of a summit of EU heads of government on Thursday and Friday where she has warned she will ask for a long Brexit delay unless parliament ratifies the deal she struck in November.
Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of euroskeptics in Britain’s House of Commons, said he had not yet made up his mind how to vote on May’s deal but any Brexit was better than staying in the bloc.
If Rees-Mogg did swing behind May, dozens of rebels could follow him, although it is unclear if that would be enough to save her deal.
“No deal is better than a bad deal but a bad deal is better than remaining in the European Union in the hierarchy of deals,” Rees-Mogg told LBC radio. “A two-year extension is basically remaining in the European Union.”
Rees-Mogg said his dream option would be a no-deal exit on March 29 but that he felt May – a former supporter of EU membership who won the premiership in the turmoil that followed the 2016 Brexit referendum – would seek to stop a no-deal.
“The question people like me will ultimately have to answer is: can we get to no-deal instead? If we can get to no-deal instead, that is a better option… but I am concerned the prime minister is determined to stop a no-deal.”
May’s deal, a bid to keep close trading and security ties with the EU while leaving the bloc’s formal political structures, was defeated by 230 votes in parliament on Jan. 15, and by 149 votes on March 12.
If she could get the deal approved after the biggest parliamentary defeat for a government in modern British history, it would mark a spectacular and surprising turnaround and by far the biggest achievement of her crisis-riven tenure.
To get her deal through parliament, May must win over at least 75 lawmakers – dozens of rebels in her own Conservative Party, some Labour lawmakers, and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which props up her minority government.
The biggest issue is the so-called Northern Irish border backstop, an insurance policy aimed at avoiding post-Brexit controls on the United Kingdom’s border with EU-member Ireland.
Many Brexiteers and the DUP are concerned the backstop will trap the United Kingdom in the EU’s orbit indefinitely, and have sought guarantees it will not.
THIRD TIME LUCKY?
May’s finance minister, Philip Hammond, held talks with the DUP on Friday but said the government did not yet have support it needed and would only put the deal to a third vote if it felt it could win.
“There are some cautious signs of encouragement … but there is a lot more work to do,” Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the BBC on Monday.
If May could swing the DUP behind her, along with several dozen more Brexit supporters in her own party, she will be getting close to the numbers she needs.
Stepping up the pressure on the prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said he could trigger another confidence vote in May’s government if she fails again to get her deal adopted by parliament.
Former British foreign minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday it was not too late for the government to get “real change” to May’s deal and cautioned against holding another parliamentary vote on the agreement this week.
Johnson, a prominent Brexit campaigner who might influence other lawmakers on which way to vote over May’s deal, asked in his column in the Telegraph newspaper whether there was a way forward to break the impasse of Brexit in parliament.
“Perhaps,” he answered. “There is an EU summit this week. It is not too late to get real change to the backstop. It would be absurd to hold the vote before that has even been attempted.”
He also said May should outline her strategy for talks on the future relationship with the EU to “reassure … understandably doubtful MPs (members of parliament) by answering some basic questions”.
EU leaders have said repeatedly that the terms of their Withdrawal Agreement with May cannot be revisited.
(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Giles Elgood and Mark Heinrich)
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FILE PHOTO: U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey hold a news conference for their proposed “Green New Deal” to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., Feb. 7, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
March 18, 2019
By Julien Ponthus, Tommy Wilkes and Ritvik Carvalho
LONDON (Reuters) – Having spent three years and more than 2.6 trillion euros ($3 trillion) trying to boost economic growth across the euro zone, the European Central Bank’s mixed record may open the door for a high-spending, radical alternative.
With populist and anti-austerity parties looking to build support before European parliamentary elections in May just as growth withers, so-called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is challenging conventional thinking on debt, deficits and how economies should be run.
Popularized by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star of the American left, MMT posits in essence that a country with the ability to print its own currency can create and spend money freely, so long as inflation is kept under control.
The country can’t be forced into defaulting on its debts since it can always print money to pay creditors, the theory runs.
It’s music to the ears of European populists demanding a ramp-up in public spending to fight unemployment and finance social programs. Years of central bank quantitative easing (QE), they say, have done little except inflate financial asset prices.
MMT is about financing government spending and the real economy, its advocates say, while QE is solely designed to stimulate financial markets through massive purchases of private and public bonds on the secondary market.
MMT is unlikely to be put into practice in the euro zone any time soon. Rules of the currency area make it impossible for member states to print money unilaterally, and mainstream policymakers have derided the economics behind it.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has called MMT “voodoo” thinking.
But the ideas underpinning the theory are helping shape an ideological push against European fiscal orthodoxy and policymakers’ reluctance to consider big public debt-funded investment schemes.
“Post-European elections, there will be much more talk at a European level of (fiscal) spending and stimulus,” John Roe, a fund manager at Legal & General Investment Management, Britain’s biggest asset manager, told Reuters.
NEW DEAL
Roe noted calls for a vast publicly funded “Green New Deal”, as touted by some left-wing U.S. Democrats, are yet to materialize in Europe. But demands for such a policy remain a possibility which investors should take seriously.
The ECB’s admission this month that QE had failed to lift inflation and economic growth, and that it would leave interest rates at rock-bottom until at least 2020, leaves it vulnerable to calls for a drastic rethink.
“Real-world Modern Monetary Theory, defined as the monetization of large public deficits by the central bank, would be most advisable in the eurozone,” even if close to impossible to implement in the bloc, said Vincent Deluard, an analyst at financial advisory firm INTL FCStone.
(GRAPHIC: Euro zone growth and inflation – https://tmsnrt.rs/2UwLSzu)
POPULIST ROUTE
With talk of Europe slipping into a spiral of “Japanification”, a combination of weak growth and low inflation, pressure is building for fresh policy approaches, although advocates of MMT are yet to appear in European discourse as frequently as they have in the United States.
That could be about to change.
“People are assuming that if there’s a continued European economic slowdown after the European elections, European politicians will say Europe needs more infrastructure and they think they can print money at no extra cost”, said Saxo Bank’s chief investment officer Steen Jakobsen.
There have already been some moves towards an MMT-type approach.
British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 proposed “people’s QE”, a government-directed central bank-financed scheme to fund infrastructure.
More recently, Italy’s ruling parties have been in a standoff with Brussels over their desire to end an EU-imposed fiscal straightjacket and spend more to revive a struggling economy.
French President Emmanuel Macron has beefed up public spending to defuse violent “yellow vest” street protests.
In a research note titled “The age of rage, what populism means for markets”, Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.
Markets should “to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead”, Every warned.
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
Little of this means much unless politicians ready to rip up the macroeconomic rulebook can make it into office. And the financial establishment is unsurprisingly near universal in its condemnation.
They argue that governments let loose to print money can set off a spiral into hyperinflation and economic collapse.
“The general idea that government debt can be financed by central banks is a dangerous proposition”, ECB chief economist Peter Praet said in a recent online Q&A.
“In the past, this has resulted in hyperinflation and economic turmoil”, Praet said, adding: “That’s why central banks are independent”.
A poll http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/modern-monetary-theory conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business found that 88 percent of economic experts disagreed with the idea that countries able to borrow in their own currencies need not worry about government deficits because they can always print money to finance their debts.
Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, a fiscal hawk, has also slammed MMT, calling it an “extreme argument that won’t be accepted widely.”
(GRAPHIC: MMT poll – https://tmsnrt.rs/2UAFmHZ)
UNLIKELY EVENTS
The debates around MMT might seem unlikely to rouse the average European, but interest is growing – “MMT” is a more searched term on Google than “ECB”.
For an interactive version of the below chart, click here https://tmsnrt.rs/2O4KOAd.
In a newsletter, East West Investment Management analyst Kevin Muir noted widespread anger among electorates in leading economies, arguing: “Monetary stimulus with fiscal austerity doesn’t do anything except make the rich richer.”
And while MMT might sound like a political and economic fantasy, some economists warn against discounting the momentum of populist waves: Britain’s vote to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump had both been viewed as improbable.
Societe Generale analyst Albert Edwards believes that the next recession is likely to see the normalization of ideas such as the “People’s QE” proposed by Britain’s Corbyn, where money “just doesn’t get thrown (like) … confetti in the financial markets but is actually channeled into tax cuts or into public investment projects”.
(Additional reporting by Josephine Mason, Karin Strohecker, Helen Reid and Abhinav Ramnarayan; Editing by David Holmes)
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Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip arrive at church in Sonning, Britain March 17, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
March 17, 2019
By Elizabeth Piper and Kate Holton
LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government was scrambling on Sunday to get support in parliament for her Brexit deal at the third time of asking, aiming to persuade doubters with threats and promises to avoid any move to oust her.
After parliament backed a move to delay Brexit, May still has only three days to win approval for her deal to leave the European Union if she wants to go to a summit with the bloc’s leaders on Thursday with something to offer them in return for more time.
Stepping up the pressure on the prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said he could trigger another confidence vote in May’s government if she fails again to get her deal approved by parliament.
Almost three years since Britain voted to leave the EU in a referendum, the country is no clearer about how and when it will leave the bloc, with several outcomes possible, from exiting without a deal to Brexit never happening at all.
May’s warning that if parliament again votes against her deal — which has already been crushed twice by lawmakers — that Britain could face a long delay and would need to take part in European elections in May seemed to be winning some over.
But her finance minister, Philip Hammond, said she was not in the clear yet.
“What has happened … is that a significant number of colleagues … have changed their view on this and decided that the alternatives are so unpalatable to them that they on reflection think the prime minister’s deal is the best way to deliver Brexit,” he told BBC’s Andrew Marr program.
Asked if the government had enough numbers yet, he replied: “Not yet, it is a work in progress.”
Many Brexit supporters in May’s Conservative Party say the key to whether they will back her deal is the agreement of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which props up the prime minister’s minority government in parliament.
May needs 75 lawmakers to change their vote after it was crushed first in January by 230 lawmakers and then by 149 on March 12.
The DUP’s 10 lawmakers could sway a large segment of a pro-Brexit Conservative grouping, several lawmakers say, but even then, she would still probably also have to get some Labour lawmakers on board as well.
NO MONEY
Hammond said talks were continuing with the DUP to find ways of reassuring the party that any future border arrangements with EU member Ireland would not mean that Northern Ireland might be split away from the rest of Britain.
He denied the government would offer the DUP money to back the deal.
Until it is clear that the support is there, trade minister Liam Fox said, the government will not have the vote, which is widely expected to be held on Tuesday.
“It would be difficult to justify having a vote if we knew we were going to lose it,” Fox told Sky News.
With a threat that will no doubt focus ministers’ minds, Corbyn said he would try to force a confidence vote against the government if the prime minister failed to win approval for it and tried to further run “down the clock”.
“I think at that point a confidence motion would be appropriate. At that point we should say there has to be a general election,” he said.
There were signs that some Brexit supporters were shifting their views, fearful that if the deal failed, Brexit would never take place.
“The choice before us is this deal or no Brexit whatsoever and to not have Brexit would go against the democratic vote of the people,” said Esther McVey, a Brexit supporter who resigned from May’s government last year in protest against May’s deal.
“We’re going to have to hold our nose and vote for it.”
(Writing by Elizabeth Piper)
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Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks to the media outside New Zealand House, following Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand, in London, Britain March 15, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
March 17, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has written to lawmakers from across Britain’s parliament to discuss ways to break the Brexit impasse, just days before the prime minister is expected to put her deal to another vote.
In a letter written to lawmakers from all parties in parliament, Corbyn invited them to meet with him and his Brexit policy chief Keir Starmer to discuss how to “break the Brexit impasse”, and use as a starting point Labour’s alternative plan and its support for a vote to prevent a “damaging Brexit”.
“It must now be incumbent on us all as parliamentarians to do our best to work together and find a compromise and a solution that ends the needless uncertainty and worry that the government’s failed Brexit negotiations have caused,” Corbyn said in his letter.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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Candles are flowers placed at a memorial site for victims of the mosque shootings are pictured at the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 17, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
March 17, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – Social media platforms must be able to react more quickly and stop the broadcast of live events, the leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party said on Sunday, after a gunman in New Zealand broadcast a shooting rampage last week.
A gunman broadcast live footage on Facebook of an attack that killed 50 Muslims in two mosques. The footage quickly spread across the internet and was still available on platforms including Twitter several hours later.
“The social media platforms which were actually playing a video made by this person who is accused of murder… all over the world, that surely has got to stop,” Jeremy Corbyn told Sky News on Sunday.
“Those that control and own social media platforms should deal with it straight away and stop these things being broadcast. But that brings into the whole issue of the question of regulation of social media.”
(Reporting by Kate Holton and Elizabeth Piper)
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Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks to the media outside New Zealand House, following Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand, in London, Britain March 15, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
March 17, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s opposition Labour Party would force a confidence vote in Theresa May’s government if the prime minister loses another vote on her Brexit withdrawal deal, leader Jeremy Corbyn said on Sunday.
May is expected to put her divorce deal with the European Union before parliament for a third time this week, after lawmakers crushed it twice before.
“We’ve had one confidence vote already,” Corbyn told Sky News. “The government is apparently going to bring its proposals once again to parliament this week. I suspect they’ll be defeated again, the whole process they are doing is running down the clock.”
“I think at that point a confidence motion would be appropriate. At that point we should say there has to be a general election.”
(Reporting by Kate Holton and Elizabeth Piper)
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