If George Osborne doesn't kill buy-to-let, Jeremy Corbyn will

I didn’t think there was a politician out there stupid enough to take right-to-buy to its ridiculous logical extreme, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But there is: Jeremy Corbyn.

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Jeremy Corbyn: yet another reason to think very carefully before getting into buy-to-let

A couple of months ago I wrote here that the Tories' exceptionally stupid right-to-buy policy was taking us in a really frightening direction. If the government can force private institutions such as housing associations to sell their properties at a discount to anyone who happens to be lucky enough to be living in them, I said, what's stopping it demanding that all private landlords do the same.

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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.