I have been writing on Substack for a little over one year now. It has been great to explore ideas, keep in touch with family and friends and make new connections.

Below are some takeouts in no particular order.

1. Among my best performing pieces was one of my first - The Decline of The United Kingdom and What We Must Do.

   • I borrow concepts from the traditional left and the right to attempt to diagnose why Britain has stagnated.

   • Ideology has no place in the relentless pursuit of improved living standards. If it becomes clear that the privatisation of the water system (in England) was a mistake, then it should be adressed head-on. It is difficult to offer competition on services and products that lend themselves to monopolisation such as water.

   • After 40 years of the most profitable infrastructure assets in the world being open to the market, we have not reached a point where UK water companies are competing with the Spanish and the French titans, winning contracts all over the world and investing in pioneering new technologies, which will win them further contracts in far-flung countries deep into the future.

   • Similarly, much of our planning system evidently needs streamlined and liberalised. More than £300m was spent on the planning and application phase alone for the Lower Thames Crossing (linking Essex and Kent). This is more than double the £140m (adjusted for inflation) it cost Norway to build the 15-mile Lærdal Tunnel.

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2. I very much enjoyed discovering more about the growth of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) around the world

   • It has grown from a fringe pursuit to something which is now very much mainstream.

   • The funds themselves will become increasingly important geopolitically as their share of global financial flows profilterates.

   • From my perspective, I cannot overstate their importance in teaching fiscal prudence and mitigating imbalances from mineral resources (or any sector).

   • Norway will in theory, within 25 years, be able to scrap taxes continue funding state expenditure through its 3% annual withdrawl.

3. Forward

   • Whatever the pressures, I hope to keep to one weekly column, on average, into the future.

   • Every third or fourth, I will put behind a paywall.

   • They will be around 300 words.

   • I may change the name of the newsletter to reflect more international commentary beyond Britain. Perhaps something like ‘Economic Health’.

Best

Houston, Texas.

The Houston air is humid. The streets are clean. From the 50th floor of a skyrise, an orderly park runs far into the distance, flanked by busy motorways and tall buildings seemingly of every industry under the low-lying sun.

The opportunities here are obvious. One senses the economic dynamism of the city and state more broadly, generally agreed to be performing better than many of its peers in the present.

Niall Ferguson states that the US’ federalised system of 50 states represents 50 live economic experiments playing out in real time. It is obvious to most ordinary people which states are performing well and which are lagging.

This column does not seek to make a thorough thesis other than an interlude of recognition of the state’s success.

The formula seems to be diverse industries, abundant land, low taxes and streamlined planning, quite straightforward one might think. But in the face of other US states which have blatantly over-regulated, it is worthy of attention.

Where the US’ leading companies choose to locate is where frontier technologies will be developed.

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Statistics

The state has a population of around 32m, equivalent to Saudi Arabia, Mozambique or Madagascar.

It has over 1,700 cities, including Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin and Fort Worth, relatively well spread out across the state.

It has a land mass the same size as France.

• Power, energy, oil, proximity to the sea, ports and increasingly data centers. Texas sits at the intersection of old and new industry. Oil and gas wealth laid much of the foundation, but the infrastructure, engineering expertise and capital pools are now feeding into newer sectors such as AI infrastructure, semiconductors and battery storage.

• An enormous amount of land that can still be developed. This sounds mundane but matters enormously. Housing, logistics parks, factories and data centers can still physically expand outward without the same constraints faced by many coastal cities elsewhere in the West.

• More relaxed planning laws. Development appears simply easier. Housing can be built faster. Warehouses emerge quickly. Roads expand. The cumulative effect over decades is lower costs and less friction across the economy.

• No state level income tax. For skilled workers, entrepreneurs and executives, this is a major pull factor. In a world where remote work and business mobility have increased, state competition matters more than before.

• No corporate income tax at the state level. Combined with relatively lower regulation, Texas has become increasingly attractive for firms looking to scale operations or relocate headquarters.

• Texas’ GDP now exceeds that of countries such as Italy, Russia, Australia, Canada. Income per head has continued to rise over time, whilst the state has also absorbed millions of new residents. Managing both growth and scale simultaneously is not straightforward.

Texas Incoming

The dumping of skills and capital into the state from others has been enormous.

Famously, Tesla moved its corporate headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, in 2021. In early 2024, Tesla shareholders also voted to officially move the company’s state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas. In 2024, Elon Musk announced he was shifting the SpaceX corporate headquarters from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas, following policy disagreements with the California state government.

Oracle, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and a range of technology and financial firms have also shifted significant operations into the state in recent years.

One can pick holes in arguments until the sun sets in the harsh west Texas desert. Questions around urban sprawl, inequality and infrastructure pressures are legitimate.

But for now, it pays to recognise that the devolution of economic policy allows for us all to keep moving forward.

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I hope you are reading this lying on a mat stretched out across the grass in a British park.

It is a Friday evening. The time is 19:00, but the sun is still beating down nicely. You are still slightly shivery, but you will take these glimmers of sun no problem. It was a hell of a long winter. They seem to get longer every year.

Work colleagues are playing touch rugby on the pitches. There are joyous cheers when things go their way. Play occasionally stops due to a dog running onto the pitch. Everyone sees the funny side.

How lucky we are to have this park, with a backdrop of ponds, stunning Georgian terrace houses, and the skyline of the ancient city.

I think the park, as it is, is the right use of this land. I am glad the local civic groups were loud enough to block the plans for ghastly apartments. The designs looked like house-sized lunch boxes. People would have had to stare at them in despair for the next 300 years.

Surely the solution to the housing crisis is converting unused and unwanted office space into affordable, modest residential units. Surely no one has thought of that before. Surely no think tank has ever proposed it. This must be the way!

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The games are coming to an end now and the players are making their way to the nearby pub.

Hats off to the owners who renovated this old establishment to a very high standard. It is most welcoming to those passing by.

A few spits of rain turn into a sporadic shower. Fear not. The roof cover is sliding over.

Only half a pint of 3% beer. One full pint is enough to knock you out for the next day.

Forward

Less informally, the British summer at its best is deeply pleasant and memorable: sport in parks, long walks, laughter in outdoor pubs, endless evenings that seem to stretch on forever.

There is growing evidence that exposure to green space improves mental and physical wellbeing. Access to blue spaces such as seas, rivers and lakes appears to have similar effects. Time spent with friends and family boosts wellbeing and social connection in ways that are difficult to quantify but easy to feel.

Summer also changes economic behaviour in subtle ways. People spend more time outdoors, move around more, attend events, travel locally and make greater use of public spaces. Entire towns and coastal areas come alive.

There is also something restorative about the long cycle through side roads and country lanes we never knew existed. Or the cold-water swim that shocks the system back into life.

I maintain that the country’s economic ills are real. They are a slow-acting poison that is difficult to identify in real time, finally showing up in political choices (there is always a lag time).

At the same time, every challenge is an opportunity if the right policy paths are chosen, as this Substack has long argued.

But one thing will remain. Among life’s greatest pleasures is how alive one feels walking with family and friends along an endless beach. The sun hangs low into the evening and never really seems to set.

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I wonder if analysts and commentators overcomplicate developmental economics and how countries attain prosperity. I have been reading and writing about this for 15 years. I think the solution to a prosperous economy, and thereby a stable society, is broadly the same everywhere: a strong private sector, together with a supportive government.

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Read more

I recently attended a conference in South Africa (SA) heavy with business and politics chat. A friend with whom I was there (Yvette - not her real name) was uncharacteristically irritated at an American official who tabled the idea that the USA should strike a vast trade and investment deal with SA.

That same person is the founder of a successful company in SA. After a long conversation with her, four things came to mind on the business’ success.

Firstly, she was irritated at the prospect of American capital buying her business. “We need African businesses” she said, pointing to how few there are. There were genuine streaks of African-mercantile-nationalism in her thinking and how she had run the business.

Secondly, she claimed that she would not have been able to build a unique, niche, technology-driven product on short ownership cycles. The product took time to develop and refine, “Slow and steady wins the race” she said.

Thirdly, she was adamant that when a country’s industrial base erodes, so too does the quality of economic activity. People move more into service jobs centred around finance and insurance and so on, the idea goes.

A fourth was that a huge chunk of the business’ revenue comes from other countries in Africa.

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Read more

Nothing energises me more than stories of progress.

Johannesburg-born, UK-based entrepreneur and thinker Saul Klein stole the show on the FT’s The Rest Is Money podcast.

Bucking the trend of UK doom-mongering, he argued that the UK has the third-best innovation economy in the world by most metrics.

He stated that the UK has 800 “Colts” and “Thoroughbreds”. Colts are businesses that turnover between £25–100m in revenue, and Thoroughbreds between £100m–£1bn.

These are real people in real places, often pursuing ordinary ideas. I take the liberty to extend his data-driven optimism in highlighting some easy wins.

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The Case for the World’s Biggest Start-Up Incubator

The UK institutional investment industry - mainly pension funds and insurers - is often referred to in the context of the Mansion House Compact. Chancellors Jeremy Hunt and Rachel Reeves have pushed these funds (which collectively manage c.£6trn) to allocate a portion of assets to UK growth investments. Hunt targeted a 5% allocation to UK growth and venture assets. Reeves has pushed that towards 10%.

Klein says c.£100bn is committed to such assets over the life of the current Parliament through Mansion House and arm’s-length bodies such as the British Business Bank, the National Wealth Fund, and others. These are developments that should be celebrated.

I have argued that the UK should pursue a streamlined, national-level lead start-up incubator to which those funds contribute. It should:

· Offer means-tested grants, loans, and capital injections for anyone wanting to start a business

· Offer easy and user-friendly access for users as well as administrative support

· Offer capital of varied amounts and for businesses at various stages of growth

· Portion out allocations to regional and local governments - “picking local winners” is a strategy gaining visibility across Europe

· Make public the value of the fund, sub-funds, and dividends

· Tell the success stories of growing businesses from Belfast to Brighton, in industries from tractors to biotech

Our unrivalled and many universities could contribute through funds and abundant talent in what would become a “University-Start-Up Complex”. As the Gulf States write blank cheques for a hydrogen business in the desert, Britain can easily fund a bright Edinburgh University graduate to build a quantum computing business.

The size of the fund would grow exponentially and become growing it would become a national game. And there are many good reasons why capital should stay onshore.

Furthermore, the growth of public investment and the initiation of the National Wealth Fund are contemporary bright spots, as are efforts to facilitate pension funds investing more heavily in productive projects.

The Northern European Developmental-Capitalist in me dares to dream that such efforts are precursors to the creation of a Great British Sovereign Wealth Fund (GB-SWF). After a certain period, Norwegian-style, small, disciplined annual withdrawals could help pay down government debt which sits at an earthshattering GBP 3trn in debt, to which we pay GBP 100bn per year in interest payments. Withdrawals could also support the budget more broadly, while the fund continues to grow.

That is “Good Finance” – finance of the value-adding type we can all get behind, rather than “Bad Finance” of the asset-sweating-asset-flipping type.

I have written at length about why pursuing Sovereign Wealth Funds are the right thing to do, amidst the criticism. We have no shortage of financial expertise and experience. We need to put to work beyond economic activity that is extractivist and rent-seeking.

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Contribution Programmes

Klein opined that the UK’s version of capitalism can be superior to the US’s cut-throat capitalism. He spoke about how Amazon is forging ahead with programmes that turn floor workers into data scientists. Expanding and formalising such programmes at a national level would harness the power of these giants. It would also help close skills gaps that have persisted for decades. This is a sleeping beauty:

· It should offer means-tested grants, loans, and capital injections for anyone wanting to start a business

· Businesses could contribute to government-approved apprenticeship programmes

· Businesses could establish their own programs, targeting skills shortages identified by the government

· These contributions could be tax deductible

· Business could be given points for their contributions which would be published on annual scoreboard

· These points could be traded in the same way that carbon credits are

Such as scheme targets real development and is in my view is a much superior alternative to intangible ESG and CSR schemes. Students could bypass crippling loans whilst learning critical skills, contributing to the needs of business right now. Apprenticeship-industry synergies form the backbone of Germany’s successful industrial base.

Forward

Countries across the world are figuring out their quickest route to prosperity. Egypt and Indonesia are building new cities. With vast oil and gas reserves, Guyana and Namibia are creating lasting value through fast-growing national savings funds.

Britain’s version lies in a start-up accelerator, a sovereign wealth fund, and structured contribution programmes from business. We stand at a confluence, looking back at decades of policies which have worked, and which have failed. We should try these ones. An enormous opportunity lies ahead, should we wish to grasp it.

Background

· It is an interesting time to be alive observing the growth of Sovereign Wealth Funds

· There is so much doom-mongering in the news and success stories, such as these, very often go undetected

· It is a positive sign when countries start savings and investment pots, often there are government portals in which citizens can view and track these things for transparency purposes

· This avoids the proceeds of minerals, for example, going into a black hole

· Successful societies depend on healthy economies and generous safety nets for those at the bottom

· The latter requires healthy government finances

· I think that countries which understand this and proactively save and invest long term at a national level will do very well in the coming decades. Those countries’ ability to fund or improve public services will be superior to those who have not considered these things

· That of course includes things like schools, healthcare. It should extend to things like childcare. In my view, no parent should have to worry about funding childcare and that requires funding. And the money for that has to come from somewhere

· It would argue business grants should be provided generously too – large scale national start up incubators

· Similarly, countries that do not think about these things will struggle, have financial trouble and of course, that will have political implications, sooner or later

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Sovereign Wealth Fund World Tour

Norway

· Fund value in 2025 was around USD 2trn. With a population of 5.6m, that equates to around USD 357,000 per person

· One risk – the FT writes in January 2026 is,

“Norway’s $2tn wealth fund would lose almost a quarter of its equity portfolio value in the event of climate shocks and more than half would be wiped out by a correction in AI valuations, its latest modelling shows.

The stress test exercise undertaken by Norges Bank Investment Management for the first time featured the hypothetical hit from a climate-related scenario, involving a food supply shock after widespread crop failures. It was assessed alongside the three other key areas of risk, including an AI boom collapse, debt crises and geopolitical fragmentation.”

· At least they are aware of this, at least they are stress testing and at least it is diversified

· Norway’s 3% rule – that it may only spend 3% of the fund’s value annually on the government budget

· That, nonetheless, is currently around 25% of where the budget comes from. (Because the budget will keep growing at rates beyond 3%)

· The fund doubles every 6 or 8 years roughly. So, I worked out that by around 2050, this 3% annual withdrawal could cover the entire government budget

· At that point, could the government start to think about lowering taxes or funding more start-ups with prospects?

· Norway has too much money and spends frivolously on public projects

“It is better to cry in a Ferrari”

· Norway’s contribution to the world is slowly becoming the export of expertise on creating and building SWFs

Guyana

· It is a small country population wise, with around 1m

· It sits in the same oil basin as Venezuela, some of the largest oil and gas finds in history. The Stabroek block is being exploited largely by Exxon Mobil.

· The Economist wrote in 2025,

“It is a positive sign, then, that Guyana has sought advice from Norway on how to handle its wealth, and set up a sovereign wealth fund to do so. The fund is worth $3.6bn and is growing by tens of millions a month. One stated goal for the reserve is to ensure that “volatility in natural resource revenues does not lead to volatile public spending”.”

· Already that fund sits at around USD 3,600 per citizen and it has only been going for a few years

Asia / Middle East

Indonesia

· Danantara was founded in 2025 and already has a pot of USD 1trn

· Already that fund sits at around USD 3,600 per citizen

· That is large seed funding, the government is not messing around with that

· Indonesia wants to make a go of its Nickel resource and is going after homegrown refining. Refining being the next stage up in the value chain

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Singapore

· Resource Naked Singapore has two funds:

· Established in 1981 – the Government of Singapore investment Corporation (GIC Private Limited) – manages the country’s foreign reserves of around US 800 bn.

· Founded in 1974, Tamesak Holdings, focuses on Singapore’s assets and stakes in various firms such as port operators at around USD 284 bn.

· In recent years, returns have weakened on these two, but these are long term investments

Kuwait

· Oil-and-gas-rich Kuwait has had one or more for a long time

· In one year, some time ago, the returns on one exceeded tax revenue the country was receiving from hydrocarbons

UAE

· In the UAE, it has long become a part of the furniture and an indispensable part of long-term government thinking, planning and strategies.

o ADIA – Abu Dhabi Investment Authority

o ICD – Investment Corporation of Dubai

o PJSC – Mubadala Investment Company

o ADQ – Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company

§ Recently this has been folded into L’imad, a new SWF chaired by the emirate’s crown prince, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

o EIA – Emirates Investment Authority

o DW – Dubai World

o RAKIA – Ras Al-Khaimah Investment Authority

o SAM – Sharjah Asset Management Holding

· Combined, these value of these assets in all UAE funds are above USD 2.8trn

· If you consider that 88% of the population of UAE is expatriates. So, the native population of the UAE is 3.7m. That quates to around USD 756,000 / per citizen, almost double the value of the Norwegian fund.

· Their investment sprees have been quite astounding in recent years. Analysts have found it quite hard to keep up with.

· Analysts talk now of the UAE becoming a “SWF Power”, influence on global wealth flows.

Africa

Namibia

· Namibia, a small country population wise in Southwest Africa with around 3m

· Its offshore oil and gas reserves are potentially some of the largest in the world, including the famous Venus field

· Its fields are very far offshore, the water is cold water, the currents are strong, only foreign oil majors will be able to get it out

· It created the Welwitschia Sovereign Wealth Fund in 2022 with seed capital of NAD 260m (USD 16m) and has now grown to NAD 453m (USD 28m) 18% annual growth

· It is an afterthought for the first seven years or so as it grows slowly and steadily. Often these funds will have a law stating that the government may not withdraw any amount until a certain year / until it gets to a certain size

· Currently that funds sits at USD 5 / person, but it has not pumped any oil yet. Those proceeds are taxes on exploration

· It could reach USD 30bn within a decade, (USD 3,000 / person)

· I think of a lot of the ones being established, this one has the potential to be the world’s largest per person in the coming decades

South Africa

· In 2022, SA scholars Mzukisi Qobo and Mills Soko examined the prospect of a SWF in SA, ‘Can South Africa Establish a Sovereign Wealth Fund?’

· I wrote an essay in 2024 on why South Africa should establish one. I’ll happily go out on a limb here. I agree with analyst Sizwe Mpofu Walsh that SA should create one. I don’t agree with him on a lot of things, but I don’t disagree on this

· The country may create one in 20 years’ time when all the diaspora are flooding back, and the markets are open. At that point, some may say it should have been created one 20 or 50 years ago. This article will still be here.

· So much of SA’s history has been around extractivism, mining companies coming and going, literally leaving large pits in their tracks

· SA should have created a SWF 150 years ago

1. South Africa has diverse minerals, same waters as Namibia and Mozambique

2. It has a sophisticated financial industry:

i. The argument against it goes that it would enable large-scale looting

ii. I am alive to that but the one or few government institutions that are consistently well managed are the Reserve Bank / Central Bank, Ministry of Finance

iii. It is strategic funds that tend to be looted more so than resource-heavy funds

iv. Some say financial regulation is so good that that enabled the country to avoid serious shock that other countries experienced around 2008

v. In the same way that SA’s gold and USD reserves ballooned in the 2000s thanks to a mineral boom, this has been well managed

vi. There is so much financial expertise, both at home and abroad, with a well-connected diaspora

vii. For emerging markets like SA, the more value of the fund grows in foreign currency, the more valuable and the more anti fragile that becomes in the home currency of Rand / ZAR

· Once a pot begins, it becomes a nationwide game played to see how much you can grow the fund by

Europe

Ireland

· Ireland has established two funds:

o Future Ireland Fund (FIF) (EUR 13.1bn): Designed for long-term expenditure pressures, with a benchmark of 80% equities and 20% fixed income

o Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund (ICNF) (EUR 4.5bn): Acts as a countercyclical, 100% fixed-income fund to support state spending during economic downturns and finance environmental projects.

· Future Ireland Fund:

“The legislation states that the purpose of the FIF “shall be to support, in a consistent and sustainable manner, State expenditure in 2041 or any year thereafter.

Essentially, the FIF is a long-term savings fund which is intended to grow over time, and to remain locked away until at least 2041. The NTMA [National Treasury Management Agency] will invest and manage the Fund on a commercial basis to seek optimal financial return such that the capital of the Fund, and any investment return earned, is available to be withdrawn by the Government from 2041 onwards. Once withdrawn, it will be a matter for the Government to decide how that money is spent by the Exchequer.”

· The FT quotes Pascal Donohoe, the then Irish finance minister, in 2025, saying that he expects Ireland to have saved €16bn by the end of 2025 in two sovereign wealth funds that the government set up to make use of “windfall” corporation taxes - additional tax revenue that is far higher than domestic production can explain.

· In the same article, I agree with Dan O’Brien, chief economist at the Institute of International and European Affairs, a Dublin think-tank,

“… is underwhelmed by the €16bn in savings. “That’s a tenth of €160bn,” he says, referring to corporation tax receipts in the past decade. “It’s been a policy failure not to treat a much greater share of that revenue as windfall and put it into a sovereign wealth fund.”

UK

· There could be a renaissance in North Sea oil and gas exploration and production (E&P)

· We may have a chance to start again

· I know some Norwegian companies have made huge strides in recent years in being able to extract hydrocarbons in a more efficient way

· It would be unlikely to match the first wave of North Sea windfall

· There are other minerals and mines that could contribute to a UK SWF

· It is not only resources, but profits on privately operated state assets, for example, should also go into the fund

· Of all the financial expertise that we have, all the privately operated assets that we have, we could build an enormous fund

· Thatcherite tax breaks in the 1980s, we are paying for it now with a fiscal black hole

· We can laugh and make jokes about how unrealistic this is but if we don’t do anything different as a country, we’ll continue to lose competitiveness

· Rachel Reeves’ establishment of the National Wealth Fund, established in 2024. It is about 50 years late but it is better late than never. It is more of an infrastructure bank.

· The best time to start saving was 30 years ago. The second-best time to start saving is today

Libertarians

· Libertarians support the idea of very minimal government

· People like Peter Thiel

· They would be against the idea of a SWF fund as its government run

· They make some very good points. I am not a libertarian, but I agree with them about things like infrastructure projects and how government planning systems get in the way etc

· Anyway, they talk a lot about government debt. Some of them have watches that track government debt live in real time

· Turn that on its head and your watch developmentalist watch should track the value of your country’s sovereign wealth fund in real-time

· Watch it grow over time. You can be dwarfed by government debt, or you can stand in awe at the wall of country’s piggy bank. Norway is a creditor. UK is a debtor. These countries had similar gross hydrocarbon reserves. We stare at a pile of debt. Norway stares at a pile of savings

Adding value

· Resource extraction adds no value to an economy

· Value-add economic activity vs extraction-driven economic activity

· Good economic growth vs bad economic growth

· Quality growth vs quantity growth

· Good capitalism vs bad capitalism

· Good trickle-down economics vs bad trickle-down economics

Taken together, countries which are not establishing SWFs and by extension thinking about their long-term futures, have long since become the odd ones out.

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Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

I am keeping broadly to my weekly post and hoping to do so long into the future. Every third or fourth post will be paywalled.

I much enjoyed putting together my first audio note. That was on the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund (“The Fund”/” The Pension Fund”). Thanks to those of you wrote in about it.

The idea of producing audio notes is to have a quicker turnaround time whilst getting a single point across concisely.

The architects and guardians of Norway’s fund deserve enormous credit, and I have since learned are exporting their skills and experience all over the world.

They have proven that with patience, discipline and foresight, a nation’s bounty can truly benefit its people.

After posting on the Norwegian fund, a mind-boggling thought occurred to me. With the government allowed to withdraw 3% of the fund annually, the fund will continue to grow as it grows at rates much higher than that.

By around 2050, therefore, the entire government budget could be funded by “The Fund”. Whilst many countries struggle in the treacherous waters of the finance-political-economic of the modern age, Norway is quietly transitioning to a finance-funded state.

It is hard for even the most ardent libertarian to argue with this astounding Nordic symbol of discipline.

Perhaps proponents of the Northern European big state like me can meet libertarians on an issue like this in realising the importance of fiscal prudence.

And I would put to the libertarians: How would Norway be better off if it had taken the British approach of low tax, low commitment for operators?

The answer needs not much explanation other than gazing in awe at the country’s USD 2trn buffer.

One post can lead to another for me these days. I am fascinated by how other countries are starting Sovereign Wealth Funds from Guyana to Namibia and Ireland and will do a post on that.

Indeed, across the world, the difference between extractive economic growth and long-term value-add economic activity is becoming clear.

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Tourist Tax

In due course, I will also do a post on a tourist tax. At one level it can be seen as extra regulation, the proceeds of which can be misused.

At another level, modern problems such as overcrowding require modern solutions.

South Africa

I’ll have the privilege of being in South Africa during March and April and will look forward to learning and absorbing all that I can.

When that country’s politics finally lands in a way that the economy can be liberalised and de-racialised, it will perhaps be the most diversified and dynamic emerging market on earth.

That will have been against the odds of what most people would have had in mind for that country’s future.

I recently produced an article on the country’s on how economic liberalisation should be coupled with a poverty-means-tested voucher system for schooling and healthcare.

This is a flagship policy of analyst Anthea Jeffrey at the country’s long established think tank of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR).

I elucidated how it could work in practise, why it is a political vote winner there for the taking, and how small business grants could be added into the mix.

I also analysed ongoing political instability in the province of KwaZulu-Natal on the Centre for Risk Analysis, also a unit of the IRR.

That province is home to the City of Durban. On a few conditions, I am bullish on the long term prospects of the province, and the country.

I penned a short column on the Minister of Agriculture’s diar handling of the Foot and Mouth (FMD) crisis in the country. He is also head of the highly-scrutinised former opposition party of the Democratic Alliance (DA).

A matter of hours before submitting, the same minister announced he would not be standing for a further term as party leader, and U-turned on various bad policies.

In this instance, Minister John Steenhuisen made correct calls and is quitting whilst he is ahead.

This is most important because the ex-opposition must be seen as a credible alternative to the dominant African National Congress (ANC), whose policies of the last 15 years have choked economic growth.

It is more reflective than it is polished. I will make these punchier over time.

What started out as a nominal amount in 1998, is now the envy of the world.

Lofoten, Norway

Source: Norges Bank Investment Management

1) What is a Sovereign Wealth Fund and why did Norway create one?

• A national savings and investments pot that (mostly oil and gas companies) have paid into over time. This has come from taxes on profits, royalties, etc

• It began in 1998 with a nominal sum of USD 23bn

• By 2025, it had grown to a sum of USD 2.1trn (equivalent to the value of the economy of Brazil or Canada)

• What started as a small sum in 1998 is now the envy of the world

• It roughly doubles every six years

• The value of the Norwegian economy sits at USD 500bn. So, Norway could live off the fund for 4 years.

• A lot of western economies have a rude awakening coming with ballooning public debt

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2) More

Breakdown:

1. Equities – publicly traded stocks and shares (7,200 companies) - 71.3%

2. Fixed Income (government bonds) - 26.5%

3. Real Estate - 1.7%

4. Infrastructure - 0.4%

• It is part of public discourse in Norway about the fund going into private equity

• It experienced slow and steady growth for the first seven or so years, so countries creating them nowadays cannot expect to create a mammoth pot overnight.

• The 3% rule: The rule states that a maximum of 3% of the fund’s value should be allocated to the yearly government budget.

• Its main stated justification is to avoid the Dutch disease in the Norwegian economy due to the large influx of oil-sourced revenue. It is believed that the fund will grow with more than 3% yearly over time, which makes it possible to allocate up to 3% to the yearly budget without decreasing the value of the fund.

• The rule was introduced in 2001 during the First cabinet Stoltenberg, and has a broad cross-party support.

3) UK comparison

• Prime Minister Margeret Thatcher gave tax breaks to large oil and gas majors in the 1980s

• That contrasts to Norway’s approach of saving and investing proceeds

• It is a capital-intensive industry, so one can to a large extent understand that approach

• A lot of oil and gas fields in the UK border Norwegian fields

• The UK does not have a national oil and gas champion state owned / state-run company like Norway’s Equinor

• Equinor is developing Rosebank

• The creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund has never been a part of the UK conversation or political discourse

• The Chancellor in recent years has started a public investment fund so there are good moves in that direction

• One has to pay off debt or at least have a debt-to-GDP ratio that’s very low before thinking about savings and investments

• Norway’s public debt-to-GDP sits at 55% whereas the UK’s sits at 95%

4) Other countries

• Namibia created the Welwitschia Sovereign Wealth Fund in 2022 with seed capital of NAD 260m (USD 16m) and has now grown to NAD 453m (USD 28m) 18% annual growth

• It is an afterthought for the first seven years or so

• Namibia’s offshore oil and gas reserves are potentially some of the largest in the world. The country has a population of aroud 3.1m

• Norway has provided assistance to the government of Namibia in setting up its oil and gas industry

• Other countries in Africa are making moves towards the creation of Sovereign Wealth Funds

• There are concerns about ‘Strategic’ funds being looted by politicians. That is contrasted to a publicly-visible fund with a transparent portal.

• It is about value adding economic activity, not economic activity based on extraction

5) Other countries and the future

• There is a realistion that one has to create long term value from mineral extraction, not only a few jobs for foreign engineers

• Kuwait’s fund in one year made more revenue from overseas investments than it did from oil and gas

• Singapore has two funds:

  • One for overseas / foreign currency denominated investments

  • One for investments of publicly owned enterprises

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Spend a few days in London and you could be forgiven for thinking Britain is an economic utopia. The cafés are full. Construction cranes dominate the skyline. The subway is moving. Money is clearly moving.

Yet beneath the surface, the foundations look less solid.

Economists obsess over productivity for good reason. At one level, productivity measures how much value each worker produces per hour. That is the simplest way to put productivity even if some would say that that assessment is too simplistic.

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Küblis, Grisons, Switzerland.

My way of wishing people a happy new year is to assess, in small measure, why Switzerland is so successful and prosperous.

This is more of a short editor’s note. For a thorough read, I’d point to two pieces:

· Analyst on the show explains the country’s longstanding success by:

· A highly decentralised system of power, with Cantons (provinces) and Municipalities having broad responsibilities and tax raising levers.

· Frequent referendums and close contact with local authorities means citizens are highly involved in decision making, ensuring higher accountability and performance.

· The FT’s 2025 piece, “Is Switzerland Losing its Place in the World?” talks of how:

· Various Swiss-focused executives have made the point of late that the country may be losing competitiveness.

· Various high profile corporate scandals of late have weighed on the country’s reputation.

· Switzerland, and particularly its pharmaceutical industry, was hit particularly hard with US tariffs, highlighting the vulnerability non-EU states have of a not being part of a negotiating block.

· Nonetheless, the country has reinvented itself before,

“the end of banking secrecy in 2018 spurred a shift towards advisory-led wealth management; rising labour and currency costs pushed exporters into difficult-to-replicate niches.”

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My thoughts:

· Infrastructure:

Alongside rugged mountains and rivers run roads, railway lines and cycle paths. Infrastructure is imagined, built and maintained. The multiplication of those developments eases transport, access and communications – the movement of goods, people and services.

The challenging geography of Switzerland dwarfs any impediment the UK may have to infrastructural upgrades.

The “Snow Economy” of tourism, resorts, skiing equipment, etc, could contribute as much as 5% of GDP.

· Local Government:

I wrote a piece in October 2025 on how local authorities in the UK should have more power.

Residents will often have a say on how the money of the Municipality, Canton, or Nationally, is spent. That increases accountability, transparency and standards.

Lojacono added that Switzerland has in practice a taxation formula of 30:40:30. Citizens pay around:

· 30% of taxes to the local council (contrasted to around 7% in the UK)

· 40% to the canton (province or regional government equivalent such as the Scottish government)

· 30% national government

Another point he raised was that high salaries attract top talent which in turn runs the local council better. Indeed, the business of running a council is often work of administration and bureaucracy.

So many councils can feel like ‘large country clubs’

· Corporate tax:

Federal corporate tax is 8.5%. Cantons and municipalities add their own taxes, bringing combined effective rates to between 12–21%, but cantonal competition keeps rates low.

One conclusion came to me late last year: the countries that thrive in the decades ahead will not be those that dismantle the welfare state, but those that make it work alongside highly competitive, world-class businesses.

This will sound incompatible to some. Debates about the welfare state are increasingly polarised – framed as a choice between compassion and growth. Many successful economies have long combined generous social protection with formidable corporate ecosystems.

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Japan and Germany are obvious examples. Both operate expansive welfare systems while producing globally dominant manufacturers, exporters, and increasingly high-value technology firms. Their success suggests that the question is not whether to have a welfare state, but how it is designed.

The UK’s problem, then, is less about generosity and more about structure. Marginal tax rates and benefit withdrawal systems often create sharp disincentives to work, save, or scale a business. These frictions accumulate, discouraging productivity and long-term growth across the economy.

This issue extends beyond benefits alone. In my discussion of last year’s budget, I outlined Dan Neidle’s proposed changes to of Capital Gains Tax (CGT). When capital gains are taxed significantly out of sync to earned income, it distorts incentives and undermines perceptions of fairness.

It also often fails to deliver the investment boost its defenders promise. Aligning these rates more closely could raise revenue and encourage longer-term capital allocation.

Corporate tax is another weak point Neidle points to requiring simplification.

Britain’s system is riddled with reliefs, exceptions, and cliff-edges that produce bizarre effective tax rates – particularly in the so-called “marginal relief” band. For many growing firms, the tax code becomes a brake just as they begin to scale.

There is a simpler path available. A streamlined welfare system that supports participation, combined with lower and clearer marginal tax rates for individuals and businesses, would be a powerful growth catalyst. It would also restore a sense that effort and ambition are rewarded rather than penalised.

We live in an era of abundant policy evidence.

We know which systems have worked, which have failed, and why.

What is clear for 2026 and beyond is that that the right balance is something we should strive for.

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Standing on the north-east corner of Ireland, one hears cars driving in Scotland on the other side.

It all seems so near, yet so far – a good metaphor for the British economy.

At its closest point, mainland Britain sits 12 miles (20 kilometres) from Northern Ireland.

Not the first time

Plans have abounded to connect Ireland and Scotland since the 1800s.

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Victorian naval architect James Maxton proposed a bridge-viaduct-tunnel designed to carry trains propelled by electricity or compressed air.

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How can a country with world-class financial expertise find its own public finances in such poor condition?

The answer partly lies in years of shortcuts, half-measures, U-turns and a long-time aversion to boldness.

We need to decide sometime this century, if we want to be a low-tax, low-services USA, or a high-tax, good services Scandinavia. Not the worst of both.

I would rather the latter. I would bet the political-financial-social nexus would support the latter, too, or at least the backlash against the former would be very strong, as Liz Truss will confirm.

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Historically, successive governments have refused to build state-led savings and investment vehicles that grow exponentially over time – the announcement of the public investment fund of October 2024 was a step in the correction direction on that front, albeit decades late.

In the 1970s, the UK had roughly the same oil and gas reserves as Norway. Whilst Britain gave oil majors tax breaks, Norway quietly built what became the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, now worth trillions. It started out small.

A country’s political-economic psyche reveals itself in the budget process. And the UK is not prepared for the tougher decades ahead. Fiscal pressure is just one of the many headwinds in the 21st-century chaos of multipolarism, runaway debts and disruptive innovations, often led by state backed technology companies.

Nations with strong balance sheets will gain strategic advantage.

In all my writing, I’ve never analysed a UK Chancellor’s Budget (finance minister). I will offer some analysis. But, if you want full rundowns, consult:

• The Economist’s Bodge-it

• The Rest is Money’s ‘How The UK’s Tax Reforms Will Work’

• The Rest is Politics’ ‘Here’s What Reeves’ Budget Means For You’

A few weeks have now passed. Here are some takeouts.

Positives

• Chancellor Reeves set fiscal rules to enforce discipline. Some countries even have these written into constitutions.

• The UK’s system of budget oversight remains valuable – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), created by previous chancellor George Osborne, independently scrutinises projections.

• She avoided sweeping cuts that would create fiscal holes and trigger shocks.

• GBP 725m was announced for 50,000 apprenticeships, will partially address longstanding problems in our skills and productivity gaps.

Negatives

• No bold moves to turbocharge productivity or growth - no major infrastructure push.

• No fundamental reform to the easy wins: revisiting income tax bands, or modernising what is (or is not) subject to VAT.

The Broader Picture

On income tax: substantial relief for low earners (as the Conservatives once did by raising thresholds) could meaningfully improve work incentives.

Low earners are taxed like Americans. High earners (but not ultra-high) are taxed like Scandinavians. The top 10% pay 60% of all income tax revenue.

That appears progressive at face value. Our overall tax burden at around 38% is at a record high.

Yet Britain is spending like a Nordic state without Nordic levels of efficiency or productivity.
Reforming public services would improve value for money - and reduce the lengths individuals and businesses go to, to avoid paying tax.

At the bottom end, the UK’s tax-benefit withdrawal system creates huge disincentives - a major reason many remain out of work.

At the lowest income levels, people can face higher marginal effective tax rates than millionaires. Means-tested benefits create poverty traps in childcare and part time work.

A smarter system would incentivise work, not penalise it.

I support a generous welfare state, so long as it incentivises work and business growth. The UK repeatedly gets this balance wrong.

Sweden’s high-income-tax, low-corporate-tax landscape has helped many businesses start and scale. In the UK, income tax barely rises for very high earners; beyond around £1 million, marginal rates flatline. We could tax the very highest more - and take many low earners out of tax entirely. This is picture is quite tricky, as I detail below.

Corporate tax also remains unnecessarily complicated, with mazes of reliefs, exceptions and cliff-edges. The “marginal relief” band creates bizarre effective tax rates between £50k–£250k of profit.

And council tax is antiquated and regressive — still based on 1991 valuations. A large Mayfair property can pay not much more than a two-bed in Hull.

Tax expert Dan Neidle’s has proposed reforms to capital gains tax (CGT). The very wealthy often pay lower rates than ordinary income earners; aligning CGT more closely with income tax could both raise revenue and encourage long-term investment.

Knock Knock … Who’s there? … Britain

Then comes the IMF question. Britain went to the IMF in 1976 for a substantial loan during the crisis of the 1970s. Many economists argue today’s debt trajectory is again unsustainable.
Yes, the UK has carried high debt before, but past surges were attached to growth booms or post-war reconstruction. Today’s debt is funding consumption and stagnant productivity.

We now spend around 6% of all government spending - 4% of GDP - on debt interest alone. On current projections, the UK could exceed 200% debt-to-GDP within a few decades without stronger growth or new revenue sources.

OBR forecast on UK public debt

Many of the fixes are straightforward and increasingly unavoidable. Land value tax (LVT) and / or a wealth tax on property – targeting expensive houses and non-residential land – are entering the debate.

Leaders will need to grasp these opportunities when they arise, to stand a chance of facing the challenges that lie ahead.

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On 25 July 1797, Admiral Horatio Nelson launched an attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It was that counterattack that necessitated the amputation of his right arm.

These days, Britain “attacks” Tenerife with its holiday-going, cycling-obsessed, beer-drinkers like me.

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I have always thought that the Canary Islands possess much more dynamism than that which meets the eye. They almost certainly suffer from “tourism Dutch disease” – tourism crowds out other sectors.

The Island may have received between 6.3 and 7m tourists in 2024, with that sector contributing to around 35% of GDP.

However, if it were stripped away, there is a wide range of economic, business, and related activity both established and with potential. Teide mountain hosts well-known research and astronomy outfits, bolstered by strong links with the UK and Northern Europe more broadly.

Different parts of the island have wildly different climates and microclimates.

The Canary Islands have put European Union convergence funding to good use on resurfacing roads and, in many cases, building entirely new roads. Professional cycling and endurance sports teams live and train on the island, utilising those roads as well as its varied terrain and jarring peaks.

Whilst it does exist, more could be done on historical tourism, showcasing sites and artefacts of the Berber-Guanche peoples.

The Spanish conquests of the islands is most interesting, including Alonso Fernández de Lugo’s defeat at the First Battle of Acentejo in 1494. It took the Spaniards decades to subdue the indigenous population on the islands.

Other lesser-known history includes Nelson’s botched invasion of the island and the Pyramids of Güímar.

Spanish energy majors have long proposed a gargantuan offshore wind farm, far offshore from the gusty archipelago. No doubt such a pathfinder project would be highly productive.

Most fascinating are the twists and turns of these stunning islands.

I attach for paid subscribers, a piece of mine from 2018 which was shortlisted for the Nico Colchester journalism prize for the Financial Times in the same year.

(I know, I nearly won, but didn’t … etc)

I have never published it but the points remain true eight years

on despite the emergence of a tough leader. Whilst most countries within the European Union have found routes to economic competitiveness, Italy continues to struggle.

***

Italian economic weakness has the potential to wreck the European project. Why could the union’s most captivating country be its unlikely source of destruction?

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Does the US or Sweden deserve more credit for its track record of successful start-ups?

This is not a deep dive comparison between the two countries’ vastly different approaches to early-stage company growth. I will do that in future, but it is worth taking a heed of the US’ method.

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In the US, lots of billionaires are willing to throw money at anything cool. That is a part of the country’s ability to continue producing world-beating companies.

Many will fail, as Martin Sandbu says, but by virtue of a sheer numbers’ game, enough are being created so that they will find the ones that will succeed.

It is not a lack of capital in the UK or Europe, nor a lack of early-stage start-ups. But capital is often not allocated efficiently at the early stages of growth to boost companies fast, nor is there enough of it.

The US has neither of those problems.

California from the air

Flying into California at dusk, the country’s economic sprawl looks endless, despite criticism levelled at the state for NIMBYISM.

I am not fully versed in that topic but from the air one sees endless glass towers, highways, dams and vineyards. Nor am I sure to what extent a lot of this was built in a bygone era, but the scale of it is jarring.

The country’s geography helps – dozens of cities, each with its own magnetism, specialism and size.

No single hub dominates; Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston, Denver, and dozens of smaller centres share the weight.

Lots of ‘second tier’ cities guard against a certain concentration risk – leaning too heavily on the culture, economy or idiosyncrasies of one city.

This dispersal of innovation keeps risk decentralised, ambition local, and optimism national.

The ability to move to a cheaper city and not feel isolated has helped both individuals and businesses.

The UK’s over dependence on London, for example, with its high cost of living, is likely to have dampened growth prospects for many.

One gets the sense that tech-booming Silicon Valley today is like the booming Britain of the industrial revolution.

I was made aware of a US investor that launched a series of smaller spin-off companies doing similar things within the same sector, but in various geographies – a way to spread bets across the vast economic board.

The US Census Bureau’s data for business formation states that around 5.4 million new businesses were created in the US in 2023.

Even where Britain seems to have high performance record such as in Quantum computing, the US seems to edge ahead quite comfortably. Of the world’s 513 firms focusing solely on quantum computing, some 64 are British – 148 are American.

Sweden?

Or is Sweden more the one to follow?

Sweden has churned out a huge number of successful firms: SEB, Atlas Copco, Spotify, IKEA, Volvo, Klarna, Sweco among others. The country has a population of around 10.5m – roughly equivalent to the US state of North Carolina.

At first glance, Sweden beats the US at is oldest game in terms of start-ups per capita.

And these are often family-run businesses that grow slowly and steadily, with a view to the long term.

A driver in Scandinavia is that one is more likely to take a punt with a new business if one is receiving 2/3 of their salary as an unemployment benefit.

Another is Sweden’s deep capital markets allowing new businesses to scale.

Forward

One wonders if in the US, by contrast, life is so expensive and hard that the only way to survive is to be at the top, or to keep trying to be.

And the whole thing is facilitated by vast inequality where easy money means easy losses.

This article is not to take away from the many livelihoods that may have been made harder by the fleeting nature of so many companies that have come and gone.

The Northern European in me leans towards favouring the Swedish model being rolled out more broadly across the European Union.

Access to early-stage capital that is not American venture capital remains one of Europe’s biggest startup hurdles.

Mario Draghi and others have made clear in recent years that Europe needs a plan to grow businesses and keep them on our shores.

But for now it pays to acknowledge the US’ ability to continually produce top companies.

That is particularly relevant for those who wish to see democracies spearheading new technologies.

For the US, scale, capital, attitude, space, and a can-do attitude, all form part of the recipe for production of unicorns.

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I’ll be doing a lot of travelling in the next weeks, but I will keep to my weekly post (with every 3^rd or 4^th being behind a paywall).

I plan to build my Substack over time, and hopefully in the future I’ll have the resources to build across different platforms.

I like to take economic, historical, business and governance lessons from wherever I go in way that blends an experience of a place with some thoughts about how it operates.

I am aware of how superficial fleeting experiences of a place, or a business can be and that’s why I won’t publish anything unless I am extremely confident in what I am saying.

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Often on any given topic, I have been reading about it, and my thoughts on it have in fact been floating around my head for the best part of a decade, which I am now putting in an article.

And you will all know that I strive relentlessly to achieve balance and often frame things more as questions or an introduction to a topic.

Ideas:

• St Andrews (Scotland) always impresses me with how it has achieved healthy development: a well-preserved old town with ancient ruins, new developments of the town have their own designated areas.

• Could Scotland build a new city? Or does a reboot of Aberdeen sound more appropriate?

• Why does the US consistently produce top companies? A partial explanation is ‘Casino Capitalism’ – a culture of pools of wealthy individuals always prepared to write blank cheques for new projects.

• Surely Tenerife has more than pubs for British stag dos? Most certainly it does!

• A bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland is a pipe dream. But it would transform the fortunes of both.

These will be themes I’ll be exploring on travels, conversations and reading to come, and as ever, I would love to hear what you think.

Please write in.

Take care

Yours in prosperity! Etc, etc

Beyond the doom-mongering headlines on South Africa, many businesses have flourished.

In part, that is because, the more the state fails, the more they take matters into their own hands.

The more the state fails to provide security, the more the private security companies fill the void. SA is arguably the global leader in private security, with its plethora of high-performing outfits, investing in cyber security and trailblazing investigative capacities.

The more the state fails to provide water, the more businesses invest in private boreholes. Some entities have invested in on-site water treatment facilities and, in some cases water micro-grids pipe water uphill.

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The economics of preparedness and adversity provide valuable lessons.

We should take the economy seriously enough to prepare it for war.

We should in fact simulate a war breaking out.

What would happen to your business? How would supply chains manage?

While the usual confrontation will erupt as budget season approaches, one wonders if it will be another marker on the road to a downsized British military, one fading away not with a whimper but with a bang.

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Finland

Meanwhile, Finland has quietly built Europe’s most resilient economy.

The Financial Times reported in May 2024, it keeps six months of fuel and grain reserves, shelters for every citizen, and Europe’s largest artillery force per capita.

The lightly populated country of 5.6m people – where nearly a third of adults are reservists – has one of the largest militaries in Europe.

Lieutenant General Mikko Heiskanen, deputy chief of staff for armaments and logistics in the Finnish defence forces, said that Finland had recently reviewed around 1,000 agreements it has with private companies to produce equipment, bulletproof vests, or similar services, for times of war.

Heiskanen’s title in Finnish translates as ‘Head of the War Economy’.

The BBC reported in April 2025 that Finland has 368 defence tech companies, according to research for Tesi, a state-funded venture capital company, released last September, external.

Around 40% of these are start-ups and scale-ups, many with growth rates of 30% or 40% as their tools are dual-use technologies that can also be used in other industries.

And so, this is not pure militarism, it is nationwide systems thinking - stress tests, fire alarm drills, leaflets on readiness for war, with around 50,000 bomb shelters.

The impetus for all of this is that Finland shares around 1,340 km (830 miles) of its border with Russia.

Helsinki has spawned a handful of unicorn businesses, including sleep and fitness tracking ring Oura and game developer Supercell.

There is strong state support for the defence tech scene. Last year Business Finland launched a new defence and digital resilience programme which is directing EUR 120m towards supporting research and development initiatives from small businesses and startups.

Finland also scores uniquely high in good governance and happiness indexes.

Some other examples of such anti-fragility come to mind. Spain made deep structural reforms to its economy in the 2010s in the face of the European Union’s sovereign debt crisis.

The inability to devalue its own individual currency ensured Spain liberalised its labour market.

In contrast to Spain, Britain never joined the EU’s Eurozone, and so devaluing the currency was always an option, allowing us to avoid difficult decisions of internal structural reforms.

Secondly, endless immigration inflows have allowed us to ignore our own chronic under-productivity and skills shortages.

In contrast to Finland, Britain’s logistics and supply chains run on just-in-time assumptions.

There is a certain laziness that has created Britain’s economic malaise.

None of this is to say that Britain has some great companies and high-class military capabilities.

But Finland provides a very interesting lesson in economic competitiveness, a blend between Nordic-style supported companies and the response to a real external threat.

We can never be too well prepared for how cold it is outside.

Image Generated by OpenAI.

The following piece will be similar - the resilience of South Africa’s businesses.

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