The Spectator’s notes | 10 March 2016

Surely there is a difference between Mark Carney’s intervention in the Scottish referendum last year and in the EU one now. In the first, everyone wanted to know whether an independent Scotland could, as Alex Salmond asserted, keep the pound and even gain partial control over it. The best person to answer this question was the Governor of the Bank of England. So he answered it, and the answer — though somewhat more obliquely expressed — was no. For the vote on 23 June, there is nothing that Mr Carney can tell us which we definitely need to know and which only he can say. So when he spoke to the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons on Tuesday, his opinion was no better than that of any intelligent and well-connected person who deals with money. In one respect, it was much worse. Unless the Governor must say something before a vote, there is a strong presumption that he should say nothing, since his remarks can compromise his hard-won independence. Mr Carney does not seem to understand this. His claim that a vote to leave was ‘the biggest domestic risk to financial stability’ was a speculation, a market-wobbling piece of punditry from a man whose ‘forward guidance’ has had to be surreptitiously retracted. I wonder what he thinks is the biggest non-domestic risk to financial stability. If he thinks it is the euro, would he dream of saying so? Unlike in the 1975 referendum, where the ‘yes’ campaign was an almost free-standing enterprise led by first-rank politicians of all parties (Edward Heath, Roy Jenkins), the ‘remain’ campaign so far is driven by Downing Street. True, nice Alan Johnson and the ponderous, bewildered Lord Rose pop up a bit, but all the tricks — the public letter purporting to be written by ex-generals, the interference with the British Chambers of Commerce, perhaps even Mr Carney’s warm endorsement of David Cameron’s deal — have been inspired by No. 10.