Mervyn King Looks Back to 2007 and Forward to 2019
Mervyn, now Lord, King (pictured) was Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013, when he retired. He gave a fascinating 12 minute interview to Radio 4′s Today programme this morning. You can find it on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08zysqw 1hr 10m into the programme.
Interviewed by Simon Jack, Mervyn King looked back 10 years to when the banking crisis of 2007/08 began to emerge. There are some very perceptive insights which could not have been shared at the time in case they fed financial panic.
He then looked forward to 2019 when the UK leaves the EU. During last year’s referendum, he remained calm and neutral and hence did not support either Leave or Remain. As an aside, this was not true of his successor Mark Carney who was seriously out of order in using his office to be a de facto member of the Campaign Fear wing of Remain. He should have followed the example of John Longworth who resigned as Director-General of the neutral British Chambers of Commerce in order to be free to campaign for Leave.
Anyway Mervyn King continues to be neutral and pragmatic. He said “We are where we are and we are in a negotiation and it’s important that the negotiation succeeds. But it cannot succeed without a credible fallback position and that is something which I think is a practical thing that the civil service ought to be taking a lead on.” Only those who seek to overturn the referendum result could disagree.