Any other business: If the governorship is open to all comers from abroad, my money’s on Dr Bollard

If we are happy to venerate a Palestinian patron saint — it occurred to me, as I composed these thoughts on St George’s Day — then we can’t really object to a foreign governor of the Bank of England. The idea may offend the self-esteem of indigenous bankers, but that’s the way the betting has moved since last week’s revelation in the Financial Times that ‘an informal approach by a member of the Bank of England’s Court’ had been made to Bank of Canada governor and former Goldman Sachs executive Mark Carney as a potential candidate to succeed Sir Mervyn King next June.

Carney, whose name was also in the frame to run the IMF after the fall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has denied receiving any signals from Threadneedle Street and pointed out that his tenure in Ottowa, where he doubles as chairman of Canada’s Financial Stability Board, has three years to run. The story was also slapped down by Court chairman Sir David Lees, and seems to bear the fingerprints of Treasury insiders — who, again according to the FT, believe the Bank  needs shaking up by a new-broom outsider ‘following its ponderous response to the financial crisis’.

Not only that, but my man in the Downing Street meditation room whispers that the idea of offering the governorship abroad for the first time in the Bank’s 318-year history appeals to David Cameron himself as a sort of homage to the blue-sky boldness of his departed strategist Steve Hilton, who urged him to appoint former Los Angeles police chief Bill Bratton as Commissioner of the Met — which the PM now regrets not doing. That all sounds a bit weird to me, and will come as depressing news both to deputy governor Paul Tucker, the well fancied internal candidate, and to Lord O’Donnell, the former cabinet secretary whose hat, we gather, provoked no cheers from No.