Jacob Rees-Mogg MP had just accused him of being politically partisan while answering questions on the impact of a ‘Brexit’ at a Treasury Select Committee hearing this week. "Beneath the dignity of the Bank of England," the honourable member sneered.
Rees-Mogg, one of the figureheads of the Vote Leave campaign, is not the only one irritated that the government has asked the Bank of England for its opinion on Britain’s European Union membership.
He was particularly upset when Carney revealed a number of bank bosses had told him their firms would have to leave London if Rees-Mogg and his fellow Eurosceptics get their way on June 23.
The City can’t help having an inflated sense of its own importance on issues like Brexit.
If you trade euros or sterling for an investment bank in London, your world could be about to fall in. If you are a fishmonger in Scarborough, you may not give two haddock about trade agreements and simply feel Britain should be free from meddling European lawmakers.
For anyone still fantasising, the fate of the UK’s financial sector, and even its economy, will not decide the referendum. UK voters will. They are a diverse bunch, and most of them aren’t bankers.
But the Leave camp can’t be shocked that the country’s central bank would favour continuation over disruption and certainty over uncertainty.
Nor is the BoE giving its view, even if it happens to align with the government’s, at all inappropriate. Financial stability is its job, after all.
As one (London-based European) banking regulation lawyer told GlobalCapital this week: “Brexit means a fundamental reassessment of the investment case for UK banks on day one."
Yes it is an independent institution. And yes, George Osborne hired him. But Carney was as balanced as a man understandably disturbed by the concept of Brexit can be.
For the governor of the Bank of England to ignore its potentially disastrous impact would simply be negligent. For Conservative MP Rees-Mogg to expect Carney to say anything else is simply ridiculous. He just didn't like the answers he was getting.