This is taking stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pim Fox on Bloomberg Radio. The Bank of England brexits, the economy. All these factors swirled together today as the Bank of England left its monetary policy unchanged, keeping the door open to another interest rate cut this year, the pound falling on that news. Let's get right to someone who follows this very very closely. Kit Jukes, Global head of Foreign Exchange Strategy at Society General, joining us from London. Where
did I hope your home now enjoying a quiet evening? Absolutely, I'm listening to your traffic report thinking I'm glad. I'm not all right, Well, we're glad you're here on on the phone with us. So not really a surprise. Nobody expected this rate cut. I guess where people start dividing is whether or not where the Bank of England that is is heading for a rate cut November. What does
Kit Jukes think? Um? I think listening to them. You know that in their statement accompanying the no move decision, they said that they were still going to cut interest rates in due course if they're earlier August assessment, which
was pretty dire of the economy proved correct. I don't know how you could easily established that the data was was that much worse by November from now so um that if I were in their shoes, I would be thinking, look, we're keeping some ammunition reserve in case we get a slower but still serious slowdown in the economy over the next few months. But November feels close all of a sudden. Well,
what's even closer is tomorrow. And tomorrow in in Bratislava, in Slovakia, there is a special summit meeting among EU leaders, but without anyone from the United Kingdom, at least officially. And I want to get your perspective on this, because there's just not just highlight problems having to do with how do you deal with Brexit? But Tusk, who is the former Polish prime minister, he chairs these summits. Uh,
he's gonna have to deal with Luxembourg. They've called for Hungary to get thrown out of the European Union because of treating asylum seekers quote worse than wild animals. Then Hungary counter attacks and says that Luxembourg helps big corporations avoid tax. Is Brexit going to be maybe down on the agenda? I think the agenda, I guess is, you know, at least the public agenda in terms of what they come out and talk about, is going to be life
after Brexit, you know, re restarting, re energizing. Where is Europe going in the long run, dealing with the problems of of of the immigration crisis or the refugee crisis, and how they integrate that and how they get growth going. So my guest, if you were trying to spin it positively as as a European leader, and I'm sure they will, it's rebooting Europe. I'm saying, Look, okay, you know the UK thing is is sad, but it is what it is. Um, what do we do to solve the rest of this mess? What?
What strong? What strong plans can we have because they have a ton of things they don't agree about, you know. And and it's interesting just in the last couple of days one of the top EU officials was quoted saying that it will be twelve months before any of the talks on Brexit begin. And the Telegraph has a story today where they say, uh, senior figures in the EU believe that Britain will give up on Brexit if they make negotiations as tough as possible. Apparently they have spoken
to five senior EU figures. Does that and actually you kind of wonder if that's what's going on. It It seems implausible in a way because the British citizens voted, but could that be what Britain? But the rest of Europe is hoping? Um, the rest of your I don't know. There's probably some people in Europe you hope the UK would leave because they've not been a comfortable partner at any point, even though economically I think it's bad for everyone.
But yeah, look, I think it's going to be very elayed, and it's it's not impossible that in the end this doesn't happen, but it's really difficult to see how it happens. Um. You know. The difficulty is the election timetable in Europe? How do you agree on the biggestsues around the terms of the UK leaving until after the German elections in a year's time. I think it's impossible to do that.
Why given that you can't agree the biggest issues, if you were the reason May the UK Prime Minister, why would you invoke this article fifty that kick starts the process and gives you two years to sort it out. Why would you do that anytime soon if you know that the biggest decisions are going to sit around getting dusty while officials m and are but the politicians can't can't rub a stamp or agree or make those those
critical decisions. So the whole thing, I mean, from where I sit, is just a kind of corrosive slow drag on the economy while people delay, I don't know, hiring, hiring new graduates out of university, making new big investment projects, all those kind decisions where that uncertainty kind of eats aweart. It's so not decimating an economy, but just really just being unhelpful at every level. I think that's the that that that's the message I picked up from from this
this delay. And then maybe people do hope that that's bad enough to be give up. By then the economy will have not grown that fast for a while, and I should probably be cross about that.