Britain should focus on what it does best

Attempts to rebalance Britain's economy towards manufacturing are misguided, says Matthew Lynn. Instead, we should be concentrating on the one thing we excel at.

There isn't much that everyone agrees on about the British economy. Should we be tackling the deficit right away, or should we try and spend our way out of recession? Should we be slashing taxes to encourage entrepreneurs, or trying to raise more to improve public services? Should the Bank of England be printing more money, or should it finally raise interest rates to encourage savers?

You have more chance of getting the Socialist Workers Party to agree that Mrs Thatcher was Britain's greatest post-war prime minister than getting a consensus on any of those issues. But there is one thing that everyone seems to agree on: the need to rebalance the British economy.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.