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12 December 2018

Why aren’t financial markets panicking over the confidence vote in Theresa May?

The Prime Minister’s tough week has been long anticipated.

By Julia Rampen

In the early days of discussions about what the UK would look like after leaving the EU, there was the economically comforting option of a Norway-style Brexit, where Britain swapped its pretensions of being a world power for the hygge of access to the single market. That was contrasted with the then-ludicrous idea of a no-deal Brexit, in which the mob hauled truckers out of the queues at Dover and ransacked their vans for every last bit of cheese and essential medicines.

With the Tory party now considering the prospect of deposing Theresa May just three months before the UK is supposed to leave the EU, the chances of this scenario now seem a lot higher. But when news of tonight’s vote emerged on Wednesday morning, the FTSE 100 – the index of the UK’s largest companies – rose a serene 1.09 per cent. So why aren’t the markets reacting to Brexitpocalypse?

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