Gove relaunches attack on experts, telling Carney to ‘curb his arrogance’
Michael Gove, the former Justice Secretary and one of the leaders of the Leave campaign, has launched an attack on Mark Carney, saying the governor of the Bank of England should “curb his arrogance”. In a column for The Times, Mr Gove blamed mistakes from “experts” such as Mark Carney for “wreaking all kinds of economic disasters”. He included European Central Bank President Mario Draghi in the same group and claimed their arrogant attitudes reflect their former careers at Goldman Sachs.
“The trouble with technocrats is because they believe they’re smart, expert indeed, they don’t do what all humans should – and all politicians must – acknowledge when they’ve made mistakes, learn from errors and adjust their assumptions,” Mr Gove said. “Because to do so would be to challenge their conception of themselves as bearers of superior insights who are not as susceptible to error as the rest of us,” he added.
He claimed that the governor of the Bank of England is showing a lack of humility saying: “Mark Carney may be many things but – like the rest of us – he is neither always infallible nor truly independent.”
Mr Gove's comments come as the UK is waiting for Mr Carney to clarify whether he intends to serve his full eight-year term through to 2021 at the Bank of England, or leave in 2018 as originally planned. Mr Carney is facing fresh criticism after stating that he would not take instruction from politicians on how the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee determines interest rates.
“Politicians have done a very good job of setting up the system. Where it can be difficult, sometimes, is if there are political comments on our policies as opposed to political comments on our objectives,” Mr Carney said at a public meeting in Birmingham last week. “The objectives are what are set by the politicians; the policies are done by technocrats. We are not going to take instruction on our policies from the political side,” he added.
The comments appear to be a response to the Prime Minister’s criticism of the independent central bank’s policies during her party conference speech. Theresa May had claimed the Bank of England’s low interest rate policy had “some bad side effects” on pensioners, savers and the young.
In his article, Mr Gove claimed that the Prime Minister was entitled to give her opinion on the economy. “The Prime Minister was simply acknowledging the obvious and pledging, rightly, to address policies that generate inequality.”
Mr Gove’s latest comments echoed those he made in the run-up to the EU referendum when he compared experts’ warnings about the fall-out of Brexit to Nazis who orchestrated a smear campaign against Albert Einstein in the 1930s. He later apologised for his inflammatory remarks.