Andrew Bailey will regret reopening the Brexit debate

Business taxes are soaring. Employment rights have been massively extended, the trade unions are getting more powers, companies are too dependent on low-skilled immigrants, and the planning system still makes it impossible to build anything. There are plenty of challenges facing the British economy that the Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey could have drawn attention to in his Mansion House speech last night. And yet, instead he decided to reopen the Brexit debate. That was surely a mistake.

Addressing the City alongside the Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Thursday, Bailey argued that relations with the European Union were crucial to getting the British economy moving again. He took no position on Brexit ‘per se’ he argued, a little disingenuously since the Bank has always been very clearly against it, but insisted he had to ‘point out consequences’.