A day, not a week, is a long time in politics

If he was alive today, I think he would have to admit that, at the moment, 24 hours is a lifetime in politics. It is hard to imagine that little more than a month ago most commentators were predicting a fairly comfortable referendum victory for David Cameron, the remain campaign and the status quo.

Regardless of what you supported, your clients will benefit significantly from the swift transfer of power to Theresa May.

My biggest fear after Mr Cameron’s resignation was that we would be leaderless for several months while the Tories sorted themselves out.

Your clients will benefit significantly from the swift transfer of power to Theresa May.

This uncertainty could potentially have led to chaos in the markets, whereas in fact, the foundations for the future have been rapidly put in place, which should dramatically limit this uncertainty.

Indeed, the UK stock market has already regained its initial losses and is now remarkably stable.

Much closer to home, Ros Altmann’s resignation as pensions minister is a disappointment for all of us who hoped that having somebody with genuine pensions knowledge at the helm would lead to better outcomes for consumers.

In her resignation letter, Baroness Altmann made the telling point that politics had got in the way of policy, specifically referring to the unfairness of the current tax relief on pensions.

Regular readers of this column will recall that this is a view I share, and my guess is that Ros is referring to George Osborne’s ignominious climb down when, having clearly signalled for 12 months that higher rate tax relief was going to be scrapped, he announced days before his last Budget it would not be changed.

In my view, it was a blatant political manoeuvre and did him and the government no credit whatsoever. I can imagine how frustrating it must have been for Ros.

It is too early to know the views of her replacement, Richard Harrington MP. However, I have known the new chancellor, Philip Hammond, for some time, particularly when he was the shadow minister for pensions, and would be surprised if he did not address the issue of tax relief pretty quickly.

Ken Davy is chairman of SimplyBiz Group