Andy Burnham’s comments on the bond markets reveal that he is not a sophisticated thinker on economics, so we must hope he listens to his heavyweight advisers.

Another Andy – Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist, whose warnings about inflation and money-printing in the pandemic proved prescient – is alarmed at the wave of overseas takeovers stripping the UK of valuable assets.

Labour’s policies and its internal strife have deterred genuine overseas investment, while creating fertile conditions for the foreign predators currently eyeing UK companies in much the same way a hyena would look at a baby antelope. 

Big names in the buyers’ sights include easyJet, ITV and Segro, the giant warehouse and data centre Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). 

Worse, it is not just Segro but the entire REIT sector that looks vulnerable. 

Having been on a pillaging expedition against investment trusts, US raider Boaz Weinstein’s Saba Capital is targeting REITs, including Workspace and Grainger. 

Moves by watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) last week to clamp down on some of the practices Saba has deployed are unlikely to deter Weinstein. 

REITs are important in the real world: Grainger is the UK’s largest listed private landlord, providing high-quality rental accommodation to thousands of tenants. 

Is it socially desirable for those tenants’ homes to pass to Weinstein, whose tactics resemble those of a cut-price Donald Trump? 

This is not a topic of narrow interest to the City: it is having an impact in the North, where Burnham masquerades as king. Pawnbroker Ramsdens, headquartered in Middlesbrough, has had a good run on the AIM market, but wants to sell out to a US operator. 

Its biggest shareholder says the board gave up too soon. If the deal does succeed, it would be a blow for Teesside to lose the prestige of a listed company. 

In future it will be investors in Nasdaq, not our own AIM growth market, that will reap the benefits. Another North East enterprise, Newcastle-based GeoPura, has been bought by Canada’s Ballard Power Systems in a £275million deal. 

That deal came about because the privately held hydrogen power company struggled to attract interest from UK investors during a Series B funding round. 

Thanks largely to its chairman Lord Harrington, it is being bought by Canadian company Ballard, which makes the company’s fuel cells. 

Great for GeoPura perhaps, but how disappointing it is that it could not raise money from British investors. 

Just down the road in Durham is Pragmatic Semiconductor, which designs and makes ultrathin, flexible microchips. 

It did attract UK investors including asset manager M&G – but if it floats on the stock market in a couple of years as planned, will it be in London or in the US? 

The point is that we have great businesses here. There are practical measures that could stop so many of them being sitting ducks. 

Haldane’s idea is to use the tax system to steer UK investors into putting capital into British companies. 

Other measures include consolidating small pension funds. 

Neither of those is universally popular. Far more straightforward than messing about with pensions would be the scrapping of stamp duty on share purchases. 

And shareholder democracy needs to be revived: voting should be made easier and clearer, particularly for private investors using platforms. 

We need to keep more of the value we create here in this country – and UK investors need to wake up to the opportunities in front of their noses.