Part 12: Sixty Seconds of Straight Talking | The Long View with Jon Rose, Adam Lawrence & Roger Martin-Fagg
Part 12 of The Long View Podcast Episode 1. The Full Podcast will be posted on 05 June 2026.
After a wide-ranging conversation covering Trump, tariffs, the property market, UK politics, tax policy and the economic outlook, Jon Rose asked his two guests to cut it all down to sixty seconds. What is the one thing you would say to someone facing into all of this uncertainty?
The answers were worth the wait.
Roger Martin-Fagg: Back Yourself
“Government cannot grow the economy. What grows the economy is entrepreneurship and effort. Believe in yourself, believe in your business model, and just go for it.”
– Roger Martin-Fagg
It is a deceptively simple statement – and a deliberately contrarian one given the hours of political commentary that preceded it. The message is not that government is irrelevant, but that waiting for the right conditions, the right Chancellor, the right interest rate environment or the right election result before committing to a plan is a strategy for standing still.
The economy grows because individuals and businesses decide to make it grow. That has been true through every political cycle, every recession, every period of uncertainty that felt insurmountable at the time. It will be true through this one too.
Adam Lawrence: The UK Is One of the Best Places on the Planet to Invest
“The UK is still one of the absolute best places on the planet to invest. There are opportunities everywhere. The property market is still one of the very best asset classes there is – and we’ve got a bright future ahead of us.”
– Adam Lawrence
Adam pointed specifically to AI as an area where the opportunity is particularly concentrated right now. The best entrepreneurs he knows are not using AI to cut costs – they are using it to do more, build more, and start more. Where someone might once have built one business, they are building six. The tools exist. The regulatory environment is relatively permissive. The talent is here.
The property market sits in the same frame. Despite everything covered in this conversation – tariffs, rate uncertainty, political noise, fiscal pressure – the fundamentals for UK property over the medium term remain as strong as they have been for two decades. Supply constraints are structural. Demand is supported by demographics and wage growth. And prices, in real terms, are still historically cheap.
Two different people, two different angles, one consistent message: the conditions for building something significant in the UK are better than the headlines suggest. The noise is real. The opportunity is also real. The question is which one you choose to act on.
