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I suspect it's a reference to the value of the pound falling after the 2016 referendum rather than a formal devaluation - given that you can't devalue a freely tradeable currency.
Yes, Danstuff is exactly correct. The sterling/euro rate was 15.81% worse (for us) at the end of 2016 compared with the beginning of the year (I've just looked it up)
TW nicely proves my point - they got away with it! The public didn't realise they'd lost a lost of their money.
Danstuff's post raises an interesting linguistic point : "you can't devalue a freely tradeable currency". This rather assumes devaluation is something active which is done by a government, which may be how a goverment presents it to the public. In reality it is something which is forced on a government by powers outside its control - in other words it is passive,not active.
clubman-
This rather assumes devaluation is something active which is done by a government, which may be how a goverment presents it to the public. In reality it is something which is forced on a government by powers outside its control - in other words it is passive,not active.
I would argue it's the other way round. Devaluation is when a government decides that it is going to make its currency weaker and can do that by dictat (in theory) because it enforces a fixed exchange rate with foreign currency, a strategy which is invariably very effective at producing a flourishing black market in currency dealing because the official rate is almost inevitably different to the real rate.
In circumstances where a government doesn't set the exchange rate (i.e. most countries these days, but not all - China for example) the government can do things which have the effect of strengthening or weakening their currency but that's a secondary effect rather than a devaluation per se.
Like you say, primarily a linguistic distinction. Probably only really relevant to economists, and I'm not one.
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TW nicely proves my point
Really not, I hope. Perhaps I was being obtuse in my intial response - I should have explicitly called you on there being no devaluation, just a drop in sterling against the other majors.
I'm afraid your point is somewhat lost on me just now.
Brommers
NotThamesWater
I suspect it's a reference to the value of the pound falling after the 2016 referendum rather than a formal devaluation - given that you can't devalue a freely tradeable currency.