New PM must use Greece as cover to cut the deficit now

Britain's deficit must be cut. Whoever becomes PM should use Greece as an excuse to rip up their party's manifesto commitment and get on with wielding the axe.

I went on Moneybox Live on Saturday morning(you can listen to the show here). The conversation was, as one would have expected, all about the impact of the hung parliament on markets. Just how big a deal is it? I went in under the impression that not only is it a whoppingly big deal, but that everyone understood that.

Not so. The other two guests seemed to think that as long as sometime this week there was a "clear plan" for cutting the deficit, all would be well. They didn't even think said plan needed to show the cuts biting now. No, as long as said plan showed things getting going next year, that would be enough.

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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.