UK House speaker John Bercow has announced that he will stand down from his role immediately if the UK parliament votes for an election. Failing that, he will step down on October 31st. This has caused a bit of a pullback in the pound as Bercow was seen as on the side of “remain” in the Brexit debate. The pound had enjoyed a solid day of gains with better than expected GDP and manufacturing data boosting the currency, as well as some conciliatory remarks from PM Johnson ahead of a meeting with the Irish PM Varadkar which also provided a boost. GBPUSD is higher by 0.4% at the time of writing but the market has dipped by around 60 pips from the daily high of 1.2388 on the Bercow news.
