Andrew Bailey, announced this morning as the next Governor of the Bank of England, is not, to use a term quoted this morning, a ‘rock star’ banker. He has been sold to the nation as a boring, dependable sort who will steady the horses, the safety-first candidate. It no doubt helps in this impression that he is, in fact, a banker – unlike the labour lawyer now running the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde.
But that rather misses out a bigger question about Andrew Bailey: what is his attitude towards the regulation of banks and the wider financial sector in general? This matters somewhat as, under his watch, Britain will have to decide how to use its new-found freedom over financial regulation – whether to deregulate, increase regulation or follow the EU.
On regulation, Bailey’s copybook bears several rather large blots. As chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) since 2016, he has presided over a series of scandals that critics have asserted the FCA ought to have had a hand in preventing.
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