What to do as taxes and inflation rise and the growth-stock bull market ends

The need to pay back our huge debt means higher taxes, higher inflation and, for investors, a return to value. Merryn Somerset Webb explains what you should do.

Rishi Sunak
Rishi Sunak: it's a tough life being chancellor
(Image credit: © Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The list of jobs I am pretty sure I would never volunteer for is long – though HGV driver is not as far down the list as it once was. But close to the top is chancellor of the exchequer – now more than ever.

Rishi Sunak has a horrible job; he needs to get the UK’s mad borrowing and spending levels under control, but he also needs to find a way to finance our relentless demands – from net zero and healthcare to pothole-free roads – while making sure his hints of tax cuts to come are vaguely convincing.

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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.