Back in May, when the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey told MPs the Bank was ‘helpless’ to contain inflation, I wrote a piece for the SDPTalk site called ‘Wild and Dangerous: Why Britain’s Money-Men Must Go’.
In part it read: “The disaster breaking over Britain’s economy is the responsibility of not just the Bank of England governor, but the entire governing financial and economic establishment. The Bank’s governor cut an abject figure when he told MPs he felt ‘helpless’ to contain inflation. But he also embodied a terrible lack of accountability, or even professional honour. If the Bank of England’s governor tells us he cannot control inflation, then the correct response is to thank him for his work, accept his resignation, and find someone who can do the job. This should happen without delay.
“But the clear-out cannot stop there. Despite Conservative MPs howling, it is inconceivable that the Bank could have embarked on the largest QE operation in Britain’s peacetime history without having cleared it with the Treasury, and with the Government. The Chancellor and the senior stratum of the Treasury civil service are therefore equally culpable, and should be gone as soon as is practically possible.”
Well, the Chancellor has gone, Andrew Bailey hangs on by his fingernails, and today. . . I read in the Telegraph that a recruitment panel headed by Treasury Permanent Secretary Sir Tom Scholar, is intent on installing Dame Clare Moriarty to the Bank’s board.
Where to start?
Dame Clare has no economic experience at all, and no demonstrated interest in it.
She does have experience as a permanent secretary in the Environment department. Yes, Environment, the department which brought us . . . . the water companies.
But wait, there’s more: the Bank of England needs her because ‘she should make a strong contribution to improving diversity and inclusion at the Bank.’
I loathe and distrust political anger. Politicians use anger to manipulate, and they’re very good at it. I hate being dragged to this sewer, and I promise you that The Long March will continue to resist it.
But really, can there be any other possible reaction? At this time, as we daily discover the price we’re going to be paying for years, decades, of mal-administration, we decide to power-up the Bank of England by shuffling in a former permanent secretary of a failed department, with no economic experience and not even any demonstrated interest in it, on the grounds that she’s an absolute ace at the diversity steeplechase event.
At my most cynical, I suppose I should congratulate Sir Tom Scholar on his excellent ruse, which manages to damage the already-battered credibility of the Bank even more, and so quickly, at so little cost to the Treasury, ‘And leave the world for me to bustle in!’
What irks, what I find unforgivable, is the frivolity with which Sir Tom and his allies are prepared to toy with the economy, and with the institutions which support it. That ‘terrible lack of accountability or even professional honour’ is no longer merely a slap in the face to the British public, it is a kick to the solar plexus, from one “whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” is all too plain.
People make mistakes, we all do. Economists make them more often than most, for reasons which I think are inescapable (see ‘Thinking in Rubbish’ for an explanation of the ontological problems subverting it). So we should not be too quick to damn the Tom Scholars and Andrew Baileys of this world. But the mistakes of the last couple of years are too large, too damaging, too thoughtless, too lacking in even basic economic historical knowledge, to give them a free pass. It smacks not of mistakes made in earnest, but rather mistakes born of indifferent and careless levity, a fundamental lack of seriousness. In other times, maybe there would be a role for a Claire Moriarty at the Bank. But now?
Time for Sir Tom to go. Past time for Sir Tom to go.