A new deal for Britain

There are several perfectly good paths for us to follow post-Brexit, says Merryn Somerset Webb

There are several perfectly good paths for us to follow post-Brexit, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

What's the right model for a post-Brexit UK? This is now set to be discussed for several years now. But there are several perfectly good paths for us to follow. There's full Brexit, which would leave us with full control over everything from agriculture to justice and immigration, but dependent on international rules to trade. This, contrary to popular belief, is a perfectly good option for the UK. Plenty of countries outside the single market trade very successfully inside it and there is no reason we shouldn't either. Norman Lamont looked at this in The Daily Telegraph just before the vote. One of his key points is this: the cash we pay into the EU every year comes to the equivalent of about 7% of the value of our exports to the EU. We are effectively paying a 7% tariff to avoid what would otherwise be a 3% tariff. Which seems a bit silly.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.