Relations between Alistair Darling, Britain’s former chancellor of the exchequer, and Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank, have been confirmed as far from cordial, as has long been suspected.
According to Labour Uncut, Mr Darling’s autobiography slams Sir Mervyn as “amazingly stubborn and exasperating”.
He [Mr Darling] is scathing about the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, who is lambasted as “amazingly stubborn and exasperating”.
The former chancellor confirms how close the government came to not renewing King for a second term in 2008 – the first time a governor would have been sacked after just one term in nearly fifty years – before they ultimately opted for renewal when they couldn’t find a suitable alternative.
That a politician regards a central banker as stubborn is not necessarily a bad thing. There are times when it is wholly necessary for a governor to say no (though Sir Mervyn’s dogged insistence that moral hazard must be avoided in the run-up to Northern Rock’s collapse was not one of them).
What is more worrying is Mr Darling’s claim that relations between the governor and Lord Adair Turner, the chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority, were similarly fraught.
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