Carney’s Brexit warnings have damaged the economy

She’s the Minister who worked closely with the Bank of England — now she’s attacking it

NO ONE could accuse Andrea Leadsom of being naïve about finance or of being elitist. The elegant 53-year-old energy minister, with a penchant for glistening gold jewellery, brings to the Leave campaign real world City experience learned on the trading floors of the Square Mile and investment banking at Barclays.

The minister was brought up by a divorced mother in a tiny terraced house with a loo at the bottom of the garden in Tring, Buckinghamshire.

She has experienced the perils of being a woman making her way in the super-competitive financial community while trying to rear her own family.

‘I really struggled, I was completely under pressure,’ she acknowledges.

These searing experiences have helped to make her one of the most fearless voices in the Leave campaign and as a result the former City minister is unafraid to challenge her former employers at the Treasury or the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney.

She argues Carney has betrayed the Bank’s independence ‘by going outside of his remit and giving a personal opinion’ about the economic impact of Brexit ‘that he cannot prove’.

She said: ‘He has no evidence for it and that is against his legal remit of impartiality. As an ex-Goldman Sachs banker Carney knew exactly what he was doing. He has encouraged financial instability and I think that absolutely damages the reputation of the Bank.’

She added: ‘I think where Mark Carney is concerned his intervention was outside of the remit of the Bank of England Act which is clear that he has complete independence in monetary policy, but in all other areas he should be impartial.’

As for the Treasury forecast that every UK household would be left £4,300 worse off if Britain left the EU Leadsom declares: ‘It has allowed itself to be abused.’ She questions the assumptions that went into the forecast.

Leadsom visited the Daily Mail to rehearse some of the arguments she can be expected to use when she appears in an ITV debate today on behalf of the Leave campaign.

Among those she opposes is her boss at the Department for Energy & Climate Change Amber Rudd and brother of Remain campaigner and legendary City PR consultant Roland Rudd.

SHE is not flinching at publicly confronting her Secretary of State who has warned that our energy security could be jeopardised by a Brexit.

‘I utterly disagree with that. Amber and I are great friends but on this I completely disagree. On electricity security there is no case to answer,’ Leadsom says. ‘On gas security there is a very serious issue because gas is a global market, 40pc comes from the North Sea and the rest comes from liquefied natural gas from Norway and the Middle East. We have no exposure to the EU for gas,’ she asserts.

The defining period in Leadsom’s life was her stint in the City. She began as a trainee trading metals for brokers EF Hutton before moving to corporate finance and BZW, the investment banking arm of Barclays that became Barclays Capital.

There, she worked in the commercial paper market, raising cash for big corporates and rising through the ranks to become the youngest director of Barclays at the age of 32, when she was appointed head of UK banking.

‘I was promoted to become a senior executive when I was seven months’ pregnant and pressured to going back to work after just 11 weeks. I really struggled because I was desperate to be with my child. I said to the bank “I can’t cope with the hours”, the hours for a director were just ridiculous.

‘I was just never getting to see my son. I stuck with it for two years and through two miscarriages.’

It all became too much and she requested a part-time role. The response was brutal and sexist. She was told: ‘We have managed without senior women executives until now, we certainly don’t need part-time ones.’ She says: ‘That was in 1999 and they paid me to go quietly.’ Leadsom’s experience at Barclays means that she understands markets better than most. ‘This (the referendum campaign) is not a financial crisis,’ she insists.

‘I was a young trader at BZW when we crashed out of the ERM [Exchange Rate Mechanism]. I was running Barclays investments team when Barings went bust. I remember spending the weekend with Eddie George (the late governor) at the Bank of England, ringing all the banks in the world, all of Barclays’ counterparts, saying “Don’t panic, be calm.”’

She rejects the notion that the day after the referendum there will be mayhem. She says: ‘The truth is, when we leave, the next day traders will wake up, they close out their positions, they take their profits and they carry on with the new reality. The same is true of general elections, the same is true with all manner of events.’

The minister’s ferocious criticism of Mark Carney, over the Bank’s breach of impartiality, partly reflects her staunch support of the Old Lady’s independence.

As a member of the Treasury Select Committee she staunchly defended the Bank over allegations it conspired with Barclays to fix Libor interest rates in 2008.

She is dismissive of the suggestion that if Britain leaves, the City will be badly damaged because of the loss of ‘passporting’ arrangements which allow banks in London to perform wholesale services, such as foreign exchange transactions, across the 28 EU countries.

‘It is simply not the case that the UK will, in any shape or form, not continue trading with the European Union. We are 40pc of retail wholesale services.’ She says a French bank chairman told her: ‘The serious problem if the UK leaves is that the EU will still need access to UK financial services.’

The impressive thing about Leadsom, unlike many of those engaged in the Remain or Leave campaign, is that she has worked in financial services and knows the City inside out. When she speaks it is with real understanding and authority.