The UK Will Trigger Article 50 In The Next Few Months

The UK currencies spiked on Monday to climb to trade at 1.3309 after hitting a high of 1.3375 on comments from Prime Minister Theresa May at the G20 summit as she moves forward with Brexit negotiations with the Eurozone. Britain will leave the European Union and restore its sovereignty, the minister responsible for negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union said on Monday, vowing there would be no delay and no second referendum.

Brexit Secretary Davis delivered a statement in the House of Commons on Monday for the first time since taking office and call Brexit an “historic and exciting” opportunity.

“As the prime minister has made clear, there will be no attempt to stay in the EU by the back door,” David Davis told parliament.

“No attempt to delay, frustrate or thwart the will of the British people. No attempt to engineer a second referendum because some people didn’t like the first answer.”

Davis also said the government was firm that it wanted to have the “freest possible trading relationship” with the EU while controlling immigration into Britain.

Prime Minister Theresa May warned there were “difficult times ahead” for the U.K. economy in the wake of the country’s vote to leave the European Union.

May was speaking as she traveled to the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, China, where she’ll make the case that Britain can be a champion of free trade, while warning of the risk of anti-globalization sentiment from those who see themselves hurt by the lowering of barriers.

May said different pieces of data had sent “different messages” about how the economy was responding to the Brexit outcome, but that businesses she had spoken to had told her “let’s get on with it, let’s make a success of it.”

In a BBC Television interview recorded before she left for China, May confirmed that the formal process for exiting the EU will not be triggered this year, but pledged it would not be “kicked into the long grass.” Britain, she said, would be a “bold, outward-looking country” forging its way in the world.

Britain would be better off being a month late in starting the formal divorce procedure for leaving the European Union than getting its negotiating stance wrong, the minister who is in charge of negotiating Brexit said on Monday.

David Davis also told parliament that Britain does not need to be a member of the EU’s single market to have access to it.

“We will trigger Article 50 as soon as is reasonably possible,” he said. “I would rather be a month late and get it right than be a month early and get it wrong.”

Britain’s pound also dented the greenback, hitting a one-month high as data showed the UK services industry bounced back strongly from the seven-year low that followed the vote to leave the European Union. “These PMIs are only surveys – more hard economic data over the coming months will be crucial. It’s easy to read to too much into a survey for a single month. We are not out of the woods yet,” said markets analyst at ETX Capital. The FTSE 100 was not moved much by the data. It eased lower, falling by 15 points to 6,879.

The yen reversed its losing streak as the head of the Bank of Japan disappointed investors who had expected clearer signals that Tokyo’s monetary policy would be eased further this month.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda signaled its already massive stimulus program would continue, but there was nothing explicit enough to suggest an expansion is imminent. Later Japan PM Shinzo Abe said he trusted Kuroda to “take the right steps”. The dollar dropped 0.6 percent to 103.35 yen having gained more than 4 percent against the Japanese currency in the last six trading days.