Norman Lamont

Now that Mervyn King has given his last press conference and spotted some green shoots of his own, attention is turning to his successor, Mark Carney. He is being portrayed as the man on the white horse riding to our rescue. He has been very successful in Canada and I wish him well. But I do hope he is well prepared for the English press. Reports suggest that the Chancellor will urge the new governor to increase ‘quantitative easing’ (QE), the printing of money or the buying up of the government’s own debt in order to speed up the recovery. I hope the new governor will exert his independence and be cautious about that. At the beginning of the financial crisis, QE in the US, Japan and here was necessary as money supply plunged to levels not seen since the 1930s.

I was surprised to be told, by the editor of this magazine, that next week will mark the 20th anniversary of my standing down as Chancellor. The anniversary had entirely passed me by. I was asked this week why, if the economy was turning, George Osborne didn’t announce that he had spotted ‘green shoots’, as I observed in 1991. Although my remark, much rubbished at the time, turned out to be surprisingly prescient, I think Osborne is right to be cautious. Economic statistics are revised so often, trying to steer the economy as Chancellor is, as Harold Macmillan observed, like trying to catch a train using last year’s timetable. The best comment on green shoots was that of my then wife: ‘You don’t get green shoots in the autumn.