What to buy for the long term in this politically charged climate

If you feel wrong-footed by endless elections and uncertain about the future, what should you buy if you want to invest and forget about it for ten years or more?

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What should you buy if you want to lock your money away for ten years or more?
(Image credit: Nik Taylor)

Last week my small and newly politically engaged son asked me a question. Can men run countries too, he asked. Of course they can, I said, frantically grasping for an example of political gender equality to offer him in modern Britain, given that we live in Scotland (where all political leaders are women) and that neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Tim Farron seemed to be in with a chance of running anything.

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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.