Expect more of the same

Britain needs an imaginative government to crack down on spending, says Merryn Somerset Webb. Sadly, we haven't got that.

The UK has a problem. As Iain Martin points out in The Daily Telegraph, we are deeply in debt (£1.8trn worth) and still getting in deeper. This is no time for "spending laxity". Yet that is exactly what we are going to get. There is no group in the UK prepared to pay any more tax and no group prepared to give up any of their state-financed perks.

Pensioners, the obvious example here, have no intention of supporting anyone who might mess with the pensions triple lock or ask them to pay much towards their own social care from their huge reserves of housing wealth. The rest of the nation won't hear a word about rationing the NHS; charging for GPs appointments; or making any more than token efforts to rein in Gordon Brown's out-of-control tax-credit system.

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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.