When Mark Carney’s name is mentioned to Mark Francois, chairman of the ultra Brexiteer European Research Group, a smile creeps across his face.
The newly elected Canadian prime minister has won an extraordinary victory in Canada for the Liberal Party, overturning a previous two digit lead for the Conservative Party.
But Brexiteers consider his intervention in the 2016 EU referendum to be almost as decisive in their favour, even though he spoke against the Leave campaign.
Mr Francois noted: “Ultimately, I would say it was almost as helpful as Barack Obama’s. The British people simply refused to be bullied by ‘Project Fear’, of which Mark Carney was clearly a part.”
While the remark may be seen as a joke, it underlines a mixed legacy for the former governor of the Bank of England.
Bank of England Governor
Mr Carney was brought in as governor in 2013 by the then chancellor George Osborne having previously occupied the same role in the Bank of Canada.
He continued with it until 2020 taking the UK through austerity, the Scottish and EU referendums, and then the immediate aftermath following the vote to leave in 2016.
At the time, Mr Osborne described his new recruit as "the outstanding central banker of his generation" and expressed his confidence that he was the man to help the UK restore its economic and fiscal credibility in the wake of the banking collapse of 2008.
Announcing the appointment to MPs, Mr Osborne said: "He is quite simply the best, most experienced and most qualified person in the world to be the next governor of the Bank of England and to help Britain's families and businesses through these difficult economic times."
Osborne has never regretted the decision and recently said of Carney that he would “want him to go in to bat for Canada” if he was Canadian.
Austerity
As governor Carney was instrumental in helping George Osborne push through his economic policies on squeezing public spending, trying to bring down structural debt and restore the public finances.
The Bank’s cutting of interest rates under his watch to what became historically low levels but also the printing of billions of pounds to underpin the economy were essential for Osborne’s strategy.
However, it meant that under Mr Carney’s watch the UK was storing up problems for the future.
The ongoing austerity saw wages especially in the public sector lag behind their previous levels, and involved cuts in public services.
Trade union leaders like the former TUC president Matt Wrack have pointed to those restrictions on wages being behind the wave of strikes from council workers, doctors, nurses and teachers all demanding restoration of pay levels.
The Labour government now is blaming the years of austerity for the lack of economic growth and productivity.
Project Fear
While arguments can be made both for and against on the Osborne/ Carney economic legacy, the real controversy comes over his decision to step into UK domestic politics.
The term “Project Fear” was coined to great effect by the late Alex Salmond in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum to underline the establishment coordinated attempts to get a no vote.
The anger Project Fear caused in Scotland saw the SNP and separatists at one point go ahead in the polls and only narrowly losing in the final vote.
But then in 2016 the EU referendum, also overseen by Mr Osborne, saw the same tactics being used.
This time Project Fear, which involved a clumsy intervention by the then US president Barack Obama, helped Mr Francois, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and others in winning the referendum.
Mr Carney’s own contribution was to warn of a massive recession and economic meltdown if Brexit was voted for. People did not believe him but in the long term he may be proven right.
Arguably, as an official not a politician then, Mr Carney should have stayed well clear of the debate on political issues and just done his job. the skills he has used in recent weeks in Canada were not the ones he needed to deploy in the UK.
The Brexit negotiation years
Mr Carney did not get as much credit as he deserved for creating financial stability as the political chaos unfurled after the EU referendum.
But to achieve this he had to slash interest rates to just 0.25 per cent and carry out more quantative easing (printing money).
He left just before the Covid pandemic in 2020 with the UK’s finances still reeling from the effects of the Brexit vote.
When he departed for a life in the private sector on company boards and then into Canadian politics, Mr Carney left a country more divided politically and economically than before he arrived.
While he cannot be blamed for all of what happened there is little doubt he contributed to those divisions.
