Don’t panic, Jacob Rees-Mogg will never replace Mark Carney

For Mark Carney to have returned to-Canada after five years as Governor, as he originally planned, rather than serving until 2021, might by now have looked like a win for his critics — so adding an extra year, up to the end of Brexit talks in 2019, is a sidestep worthy of Strictly. Meanwhile, I was delighted to find ‘Might it be worth a flutter on Governor Rees-Mogg?’, the punchline of my last item on this subject (22 October), bouncing around the global media. Bloomberg reported ‘serious political magazines’ speculating that backbench Tory MP and Carney critic Jacob Rees-Mogg might be the Canadian’s replacement; the Daily Mail cited-Bloomberg likewise; and the Economist’s Buttonwood columnist delivered a pompous little lecture on ‘how careful one must be’ in a world of 24-hour news and social media. The answer is that they should all read this column more often, and learn to spot the jokes.