Markets left barely stirred by Labour’s thumping election win

The City is relaxed about a result that it expects to bring only modest change as the economic outlook improves

• UK stocks rise and pound edges up as investors digest Labour election win
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Shares rose a bit. The pound barely budged on the currency markets. There was no shortage of demand for UK government bonds. A dramatic night in politics left the City relatively unmoved.

There were three big reasons for that. The first was that a thumping Labour victory had been expected for months. It was, in the parlance of financial markets, fully priced in. A hung parliament would have been a different story but there was never any real prospect of that, and once the results of the exit poll were announced the result was not in doubt. International investors are far more worried about what might happen in the second round of the French elections on Sunday than they were about the outcome in the UK.