The magic money tree – what can possibly go wrong?

After every Budget, big or small, Tory backbenchers usually meet with the Chancellor. But on the evening of Rishi Sunak’s mini-Budget this week, they had already scheduled in a meeting with Andrew Bailey, the new governor of the Bank of England. This was extraordinary. Since when does the governor talk to MPs? Or risk upstaging the Chancellor? Worse still, the Treasury had not been told about the governor’s new gig. When the news was broken (by Katy Balls on The Spectator’s website), phone calls were made and the Bailey address was rescheduled. Natural order was restored — for the time being, at least.

But had the governor appeared, the Tories would have had plenty to ask. It has not escaped their attention that the UK government is being kept financially afloat through money printed by the Bank of England. The sums are vast: a deficit of £300 billion this year, made possible by £200 billion of quantitative easing.