City profiles

Andrew Tyrie

The surprise announcement that the Tory MP Andrew Tyrie will not seek re-election in June deprives Parliament of “a master of the awkward question and the stinging aside”, said the FT. As chairman of the Treasury Select Committee since 2010, Tyrie, an economist, became one of Westminster’s most feared interrogators. His forensic scrutiny made him the scourge of politicians, civil servants and financiers, with a lineup of prominent victims ranging from George Osborne to former Barclays boss Bob Diamond. More recently, he helped unseat Charlotte Hogg as Bank of England deputy governor, over a conflict of interest. Tyrie – who in 2000 penned an excoriating account of Parliament’s weakness, entitled Mr Blair’s Poodle – can take credit for beefing up both the committee system and Parliament in general. Many privately objected to their treatment at his hands. (He’d “insult the Queen if he thought she deserved it”, said the late political sketchwriter Simon Hoggart.) But after the catastrophe of the 2008 banking crash, his fearless questioning and tart character assessments of the main players were “exactly what was required”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. “The insults only flowed when the witnesses had dug their own holes.” Tyrie “achieved a lot”, and his departure is “depressing”. The good news is that he says he remains “deeply committed to public service”. Since he “knows more about the governance and the inner workings of Threadneedle Street” than most members of its governing body, let’s “put him on the Court of the Bank of England, for starters”.