In Washington last week, I encountered amazement that the Bank of England is about to be run by a foreigner. This was not because of any contempt for Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who will soon succeed Sir Mervyn King, but because Americans could not imagine how a job so pivotal in the national psyche could be bestowed on someone with a different allegiance. The Fed, though far from popular in a country constitutionally suspicious of central power, does have a mythic, incorruptible status. As a result, the chairman, Ben Bernanke, has a tiny (by banking standards) salary. Last year, he was paid $199,700. This is markedly less than the housing allowance of £250,000 a year that will be paid to Mr Carney, let alone the more than £600,000 a year which he will receive in salary. Does this vast difference in pay tell us something?
As mentioned in this column before [see Notes, 1 December], Mr Carney’s nationality is not much of a problem in Britain, since we do not regard Canadians as full-blooded foreigners, but I do think there is another issue. It is that, because of the ‘independence’ of central banks nowadays and the introduction of quantitative easing, they have become huge political players. The very fact that they are at arm’s length means that they can conduct economic policies which governments want without the markets taking fright. QE is the Chancellor’s biggest single weapon, yet one which he can claim he does not control. The trend, both here and in America, is for the central bank to get more and more involved in economic management. In the eurozone, the ECB virtually dictates to errant countries. When he arrives in London, Mr Carney will be expected by the government to invest in private sector assets to get the economy moving, but the decision will be his, not its. There will then, rightly, be demands to make the Governor more politically accountable. And here the high salary and housing allowance give a clue to the problem. Mr Carney is contracted to be with us for only five years, so he is taking more money now, and no pension. People who know him say he wants to be the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada. If that is true, is it right that he should use the British economy as the guinea-pig for his policies and the springboard for the culmination of his career? Now that even a Pope can step down, virtually every job in the world has become something that the holder can put on his CV for the next one. Mervyn King is often criticised, but he has preserved a high reputation for the Bank by clearly acting without a political motive. If that reputation does not survive him, what will markets do then?
A minor consequence of Pope Benedict’s retirement is that the Catholic Church threatens to upstage the Church of England’s big day. Justin Welby will be enthroned as Archbishop in Canterbury next Thursday. Whatever he says will be knocked off the news by white smoke from the Vatican and even, if the election has just taken place, by the aftermath. This has been pointed out to the Curia, which is said to remain unmoved. The Archbishop himself, however, will not mind. He is that interesting modern phenomenon — a strong evangelical who is pro-Catholic. He spent last weekend in Switzerland with Nicolas Buttet, a Catholic lawyer turned hermit turned priest who founded the Eucharistein Community, which adores the sacrament and rescues addicts. Buttet is the Archbishop’s spiritual director. Even 30 years ago, this would have been considered so dangerously un-Protestant as to disqualify him for office. Today, it is a mark of a questing spirituality which does not compromise Anglicanism at all.
In a typically adroit column in this paper last week, Matthew Parris made the point, apropos of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, that those who most strenuously condemn homosexuality are often those who feel self-hatred because they have homosexual inclinations themselves. If this is true, does the equivalent rule apply to those who most fiercely denounce religion? Listening to Richard Dawkins, I often feel that the violence of his anathemas must reflect some temptation to faith which he is struggling to resist. Even the far more temperate Parris sometimes bursts out. In the same column, for example, he said that the singing of treble voices in Anglican choirs ‘makes me spit’. He protests too much. The first and most famous example of love for Jesus repressed by the proud will and then conquering in the end is that of St Paul. I wouldn’t be wholly surprised one day to find Matthew Parris sprawled on the road to Damascus, dazed by the light of truth.
The longer my career in the media, the more I sympathise with public dislike of my trade. We behave like a pack while telling ourselves how independent we are. Last week, I happened to watch Channel 4 News as it reported from the Liberal Democrat spring conference in Brighton. The premise of the long report — as of most press coverage — was that the Liberals were in utter disarray because of Chris Huhne and Lord Rennard. The camera therefore jumped out at leaders and delegates, shoving itself at unflattering angles under their chins or chasing them up stairways as they sought to flee. Nick Clegg was presented as a stammering weakling incompetently half-covering up a scandal. Yet the reality was that, despite everything we could throw at them, the Lib Dems had won the Eastleigh by-election. The true story was that they were doing surprisingly well in tricky circumstances. There was little else to say, but we the media only bellowed all the more.
Another cultural incomprehension in Washington: is it really true, a bright young journalist asked me, that in the House of Commons there are bars serving alcohol to MPs? I confirmed that it was. She could scarcely believe it. I felt exactly the reverse incredulity. Were there really no bars on the premises in Congress? How could politics possibly be carried on?
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