Mark Carney signals he could quit as Bank of England Governor following a run-in with Theresa May
Canadian financier has come under attack from senior Tories in recent weeks over the Bank's economic policies
FOLLOWING a run-in with Theresa May and a slew of attacks from senior Tories the Bank of England Governor has indicated he may quit his job.
Mark Carney’s contract is up for renewal in 2018 and today during a House of Lords grilling he gave a coded departure warning.
The Canadian financier said the decision on whether to extend his contract would be an “entirely personal decision” and not one made in response to “government policy”.
And he said no-one should read anything into it about government policy.
But during the questioning by the Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee he addressed the criticism from the Prime Minister, who made a surprise attack on the Bank during her Tory Party conference speech.
She had said there had been "bad side-effects" from its moves to slash interest rates and shore up the economy since the financial crisis and promising "a change has got to come".
On savers, who have been hammered by low interest rates, the governor said: "To target a specific group to a large subset is not consistent with overall support, for providing prosperity.
"There's not one group who are saving and one group that are asset holders.
“There is a big group who have debt and no assets ... which is partly a legacy of the previous crisis."
However, he recognised the plight of savers, adding: "Yes, absolutely, we have sympathy, yes we understand frustrations.
"Our contribution is to focus on our remit to get this economy in a position where inflation is where it needs to be and then move forward."
His comments come less than a fortnight after he told the Prime Minister to back off in an extraordinary row over who controls Britain’s monetary policy.
In a breathtaking attack, he stunned Westminster by saying he would not “take instruction” from politicians.
His comments at a Bank of England event in Birmingham were immediately taken as a swipe at the Prime Minister, who had openly criticised the effects of the BoE’s quantitative easing - money printing programme - on millions of hard-up savers and pensioners.
She said the rich had got richer while the poor had been squeezed.
But Carney snapped: “We are not going to take instruction on our policies from the political side.”
And last week Michael Gove launched an attack on the governor, comparing him to a ‘dart throwing chimp’.