Could Jacob Rees-Mogg replace Mark Carney at the Bank of England?

Will Mark Carney go or stay? On appointment in 2013, he indicated he would leave the Bank of England and return to Canada in 2018 (‘We’ll be back in five,’ his wife tweeted), but he has an option to stay a further three years. Theresa May’s criticism of QE in her conference speech was interpreted as an attack, but she and Philip Hammond have subsequently been described as ‘supportive’. Admirers say continuity would be a good thing through the pre-Brexit period, especially if inflation picks up, while detractors such as Nigel Lawson (‘He’s behaved disgracefully’) long to see the back of him. But there’s no big vacancy for him to fill in Ottowa and the chance to succeed Christine Lagarde at the IMF in Washington doesn’t come up until 2021. So the betting is he’ll stay. If Mrs May follows her Johnson-Fox-Davis policy of pushing Brexit cavaliers into the front line, however, might it be worth a flutter on Governor Rees-Mogg?

This is an extract from Martin Vander Weyer’s ‘Any Other Business’, which first appeared in this week’s Spectator