Governor Mark Carney is no orator, and whoever puts the fancy metaphors into his speech drafts really ought to desist. In his Mansion House address in June, it was about the legacy of the Great Fire and subsequent rebuilding — just like the great financial crisis, obviously. In last night¹s Cairncross Lecture at Oxford, it was the construction of the Sheldonian Theatre and the strengths of Wren’s design supporting the art on the ceiling — just like the architecture of the European single market, except that ‘they may in time need to be buttressed to realise the full creative potential of the peoples of the UK and Europe’.
On both occasions, Carney looked briefly baffled by his own material. He should stick to plain monetary economics, which he does in authoritative and frankly boring tones. And he should stay right away from the politics of the EU referendum, because otherwise he will walk straight into a storm.
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