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The Spectator podcast: Breaking the Bank

Theresa May has earned a fortune from speaking engagements outside parliament

On this week’s podcast, we discuss the fraught relationship between Mark Carney and Theresa May, the similarities between the sieges in Mosul and Aleppo, and why we all have to wait so long at the airport.

First up, this week saw Bank of England Governor Mark Carney announce that he would be stepping down from his post in June 2019. This was the conclusion to a troubled few weeks that started with the Prime Minister’s party conference speech, in which she spoke of the ‘bad side effects’ to recent monetary policy. So what’s the future for Carney and the Bank of England? And will May need to recalibrate her relationship with the central bank? These are the issues that James Forsyth tackles in his cover piece this week, and on the podcast he explains that:

“It all started with Theresa May’s party conference speech. I don’t think her team had any understanding of the implication of that line. People saw that outside the hall as a threat to the independence of the Bank of England. Mark Carney himself was very unhappy about this, Philip Hammond was very unhappy – the Treasury hadn’t seen this part of the speech. So this created this row and it played into this whole question of how long is Mark Carney going to stay?”

Sam Bowman, Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute, was quick to defend Carney, saying:

“Obviously private citizens and the Treasury select committee should be challenging the bank and questioning the bank. It’s a big question about who is actually doing the questioning. What we saw after Theresa May’s comments was not just the pound being sold off but the government bonds being sold off, and this was very worrying for the Treasury, very worrying for anybody who thinks that government’s very low borrowing levels are a permanent feature of British politics.

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