The UK is doing fine

The small matter of the productivity problem aside, the UK economy is doing fine, and should carry on being fine.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has announced a new immigration points system to limit access to low-cost workers © Getty Images
(Image credit: AFP via Getty Images)

Regular readers might have noticed that I have been taking some time off. For the last six weeks or so I have barely glanced at the papers – an odd feeling for someone who has read almost all of the UK dailies pretty much every weekday and all the weekend papers (bar a few redtops) every Saturday and Sunday for over 20 years. What have I missed? When I asked this question on Twitter I was told that nothing had changed. Not so. The exciting fact that we have actually (sort of) left the European Union aside, I do see some interesting changes in the conversations going on in the UK at least.

The UK’s productivity problem

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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.