UK borrowing costs fall as investors’ nerves ease

The cost of government borrowing has fallen, partly reversing a surge prompted by the chancellor’s emotional appearance in the Commons on Wednesday.

The yield on UK 10-year bonds fell to 4.55%, down from 4.61% at the previous day’s close, as markets reacted to the prime minister’s comments that he worked “in lockstep” with Rachel Reeves.

The pound, which fell on Wednesday, rose to $1.3668, although it has not regained all the ground it lost.

One analyst told the BBC that financial markets seemed to be backing the chancellor, afraid that if she left her job then control over the government’s finances would weaken.

“It looks to me like this is a rare example of financial markets actually enhancing the career prospects of a politician,” Will Walker Arnott, head of private clients at the bank Charles Stanley, told the BBC’s Today programme.

“I think the markets are concerned that if the chancellor goes then any fiscal discipline would follow her out the door and that would mean bigger deficits.”

Mohamed El-Erian, president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and chief economic adviser at Allianz, warned that markets were likely to remain on edge.

“The minute you put a risk premium in the marketplace, it’s very hard to take out,” he told the Today programme.

“I suspect that we will see some moderation, but we will not go back to where we were 24 hours ago.”

One reason sharp movements in bond yields matter to individuals is because they can have an impact on the mortgage market, with higher yields potentially making mortgage deals more expensive.

Rises or falls, particularly in five-year bond yields, can feed through to so-called swap rates which lenders use to price their new fixed mortgage deals.

This was most obviously made clear following the mini-budget during the premiership of Liz Truss.

Mortgage rates have been steady of late, with lenders making some relatively small cuts as they compete for customers.

Reeves was at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, following the government’s U-turn on plans to cut billions of pounds through welfare reforms, when she became emotional and started crying.

The reversal of welfare reforms puts an almost £5bn black hole in Reeves’s financial plans.

The rise in borrowing costs was initially sparked by the feeling the chancellor might step down, seeming to indicate that the markets are supportive of her.

A Treasury spokesperson later said the chancellor was upset due to a “personal matter”.

On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer backed Reeves, telling BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson that he worked “in lockstep” with Reeves and she was “doing an excellent job as chancellor”.

Speaking to the BBC on Thursday, Reeves admitted she had been upset during PMQs but said it was due to a personal issue which she was not prepared to discuss.

She was also asked if taxes would now have to go up.

“Of course, there is a cost to the welfare changes that Parliament voted through this week and that’ll be reflected in the Budget,” the chancellor said.

She also reiterated her commitment to her fiscal rules, saying that “we’ll be sticking to those because they’re absolutely vital for the living standards of working people and also the costs that businesses face”.

One of Reeves’s fiscal rules is that day-to-day spending should be paid for with government revenue, which is mainly taxes. Borrowing is only for investment.

Jane Foley head of FX strategy at Rabobank said the “gutting” of the welfare bill made the chancellor’s job more difficult because the “savings that she had planned for will not be forthcoming”.

In consequence, she said, Reeves faces a choice of raising taxes, cutting spending elsewhere or issuing more government debt, all of which options face opposition from one quarter or another, meaning the government is “boxed in”.

“However, investors do place a lot of store in political stability. Reeves has demonstrated an understanding about the importance of the maintaining fiscal discipline and it is not clear who would replace her and if that person would have the same credibility amongst the investment community.

“Thus, Starmer’s demonstration of faith in Reeves has provided some reassurance to the market.”