BREXIT TURMOIL: COUNTING
EU neighbours tell UK to start packing bags Camerons took out mortgage 8 days before poll
GERMANY, France and Italy want the UK to speed up its EU exit.
France’s president Francois Hollande said there was “no time to waste” on negotiating the departure.
After a meeting with Germany’s Angela Merkel and Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi in Berlin, Mr Hollande insisted: “We must not lose time, neither for dealing in a suitable way with the question of the United Kingdom’s exit, nor for providing a new impetus for the EU. There’s a price to be paid for leaving the EU, as the UK is discovering.
“The UK is already a victim of the decision they’ve taken.”
The three also warned there would be not be talks until the Article 50 withdrawal mechanism, is invoked.
Meanwhile Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker reassured the 1,000 Brits who work for the bloc’s executive they will not have to quit. DAVID Cameron and wife Samantha took out a new mortgage on June 15, eight days before the referendum.
They signed the loan with HSBC on their £3.5million townhouse in Notting Hill, West London, the same day Chancellor George Osborne announced his Brexit Budget threatening to raise taxes.
The Camerons did not previously have a mortgage on the property.
Publicly-available Land Registry papers do not reveal the size of the mortgage or what it will be used for.
The Prime Minister will leave No10 within three months and it could fund a new property. The Camerons are very fond of north Cornwall.
Downing Street said: “People often change mortgages. We didn’t know what the result would be.”
THE UK was last night stripped of its top notch credit rating in a direct response to the Brexit vote.
Standard & Poor’s downgraded the UK score two notches, from AAA to AA.
By driving up the cost of Government borrowing and with less tax coming in as the economy weakens, ordinary Britons are likely to bear the brunt of further austerity cuts to plug the gap.
The move, blamed squarely on Brexit, is a humiliating blow for Leave champion Boris Johnson. Standard & Poor’s said: “In our opinion, this outcome is a seminal event, and will lead to a less predictable, stable, and effective policy framework in the UK.”
A second ratings agency also downgraded the UK, warning last week’s vote will trigger an “abrupt” slowdown in the economy. Fitch dropped its assessment of the UK from AA positive to just AA.
It slashed its forecast for economic growth this year from 1.9% to 1.6% and in 2017 and 2018 from 2% each to just 0.9%. Fitch also predicted this would lead to fewer taxes being raked in and “additional fiscal consolidation”.
Millions of people nearing retirement risk being thousands of pounds a year worse off as pension investments tumbled. Two firms yesterday slashed annuity rates – the guaranteed income people buy with their pension pots.
Pensions expert Tom McPhail, of brokers Hargreaves Lansdown, warned: “More could be on the horizon.”
Someone aged 60, with a £100,000 pension pot, who had bought an annuity this February would have got around £5,300 a year over the next 17 years.
It is inevitable that Britain’s economy is going to have to adjust
GEORGE OSBORNE ON CONSEQUENCES OF BREXIT VOTE