Rishi Sunak can’t fix all our problems – so why try?

Rishi Sunak’s Spring Statement is an attempt to plaster over problems the chancellor can’t fix. So should he even bother trying, asks Merryn Somerset Webb?

Rishi Sunak
Rishi Sunak: able to resolve almost none of our difficulties
(Image credit: © TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)

There was a sad little moment in the middle of last year when Tobias Lutke, the chief executive of Shopify, fed up with all the social justice demands being made of his firm, snapped.

Shopify, he said in an email to staff, “is not the government. We cannot solve every societal problem here.” I might come back to the email another time (it’s good on where the limits are when it comes to the responsibilities of a company to its employees’ wellbeing).

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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.