Bank of England boss Andrew Bailey is an over-promoted plodder with a record of failure
Rank Bank
THE Bank of England’s independence makes it vital for our economy that its boss is a superstar performer. Not an over-promoted plodder with a record of failure.
Disastrously, we have the latter.
Has anything gone right on Andrew Bailey’s watch?
The Bank’s forecasts, not least of a long recession, prove wildly inaccurate. Its constant pessimism deters investment. Its public statements are prone to jaw-droppingly insensitive gaffes.
Most crucially, its complacency and mystifying failure to raise interest rates early enough to crush inflation now leave it stuck at a crippling 8.7 per cent while triggering mortgage hell for millions.
In a private firm, £575,000-a-year Bailey would have been fired several times over.
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At the Bank he ambles on with impunity towards the next disaster, raising rates ineffectually and too late.
The Tories, with our economy in tatters, can do little but soak up the flak and pray things improve.
Biden bias
TOO often Joe Biden has failed to disguise his disdain for Britain.
He jokingly puts it down to being “Irish”, based on his vanishingly distant ancestry. But it becomes serious, even dangerous, if it influences who leads Nato in its defence of the free world.
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Ben Wallace, a superb Defence Secretary and former Army officer, has an unrivalled claim to the top job.
That’s not just us saying so. The Poles and some in eastern Europe want him too.
Biden seems to prefer political time-servers with no military experience, like himself. And EU ones in particular.
The UK-US “special relationship” always seemed to be on pause once he won power. But he has made a mistake blocking Wallace.
There is still time for a rethink before a key Nato summit next month.
Wallace has played a pivotal role as we led the world in helping Ukraine. He’s the best man for Secretary-General.
President Biden should put Nato’s interests before his own bias.
Keir as mud
HERE’S a peerless example of Keir Starmer’s policy chaos.
One minute Labour’s leader is outraged by a Tory honours list — and adamant that the unelected House of Lords is an affront to democracy he would scrap.
The next minute he’s planning to pack it with his OWN unelected cronies.
They will be told to back Labour policy — including abolishing themselves.
Is such a shambles remotely likely?
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Imagine what the public would make of it. Labour coming to power, perhaps with the economy still in tatters and war still raging in Ukraine, while Starmer obsesses over creating a new elected chamber in Westminster.
Voters would think he’s gone mad.