Sterling has held near recent highs before a monetary policy announcement later in the day, when the Bank of England looks almost certain to keep interest rates unchanged after raising them last month.
Economists polled all expect the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to vote 9-0 to leave interest rates at 0.75 percent. Most do not predict a further rate rise until after Britain leaves the European Union in March 2019.
Britain will publish advice to businesses and the public today about how to cope with the disruption that exiting the European Union without a divorce deal would cause to everything from mobile phone roaming charges to vehicle standards.
While recent signals from Brussels have pointed to renewed confidence that Britain and the EU can agree a deal to govern trading relations, divisions within May’s government over the terms of the divorce continue to rattle markets, and the pound has lurched on almost every Brexit-related headline in the past week.
Positive economic data in Britain published this week, including relatively strong GDP numbers, have been pushed into the background.