Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg need to stop throwing their toys out of the pram – if Mark Carney leaves, we'll be in trouble

They say that no good deed goes unpunished – and Rees-Mogg and Gove are contemporary proof of that. Because this pair seem to want to reward the Governor by harassing him out of his job

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney tests the new five pound note at a market in London (Reuters)

There must be a special place in hell reserved for people who get rescued from a burning building and who then turn around and scold their rescuer for singeing their clothing.

Two prominent Tory Leave campaigners and MPs, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg, in recent days have launched personal attacks on the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney.

This is the same Mark Carney who stood, like the boy on the burning deck whence all but he had fled, on that morning of 24 June. This was the person who, after the shock referendum result had sent markets into a dangerous tailspin, managed to restore stability with his adult-like demeanour and carefully prepared pledges of copious liquidity for the financial system.

It wasn’t the Prime Minister (who was drafting his resignation announcement). It wasn’t the Chancellor (who was holed up in the Treasury working out his own survival plan). Certainly no one involved in the Vote Leave campaign came forth to address the nation and anxious investors. Mark Carney alone stood up.

They say that no good deed goes unpunished – and Rees-Mogg and Gove are contemporary proof of that. Because this pair seem to want to reward the Governor by harassing him out of his job.

After Carney innocuously observed a week ago that a projected pick-up in inflation will make life more difficult for those on the lowest incomes, Rees-Mogg emptied his spleen to the Daily Mail. “On every occasion he wants to talk down the economy and find doom and gloom,” Rees-Mogg complained of Carney. “He never seems to want to recognise the result of the referendum. It looks like he is a sore loser.” Apparently, when looking through the Rees-Mogg spectacles, it is an offence for the Governor to observe that higher prices are unwelcome to people on low incomes.

Mr Carney also recently observed that central bankers do not take political instruction when deciding on monetary policy. This is a simple statement of fact. Yet it prompted Michael Gove, the co-convenor of the Vote Leave campaign and failed Conservative leadership candidate, to deliver a pompous lecture to Carney on the value of “humility” in his Times column.

Gove also dredged up a disgraceful slur from the Vote Leave campaign when he said Carney’s “attitudes and prejudices reflect a career in Goldman Sachs”, implying that the Governor is a member of some anti-democratic illuminati group. For good measure, Gove also threw in his observation that the Bank’s August interest rate cut – an action that the Bank believes will help prevent us from sliding back into recession – was “misguided”.

Should we care? Rees-Mogg is a joke figure. A grown man who took his nanny out canvassing with him when he was standing for parliament, he seems to be in a state of emotional arrested development; the toys come out of the pram when he hears something which interferes with his juvenile worldview. Small wonder Rees-Mogg has a soft spot for that other angry and irresponsible man-child Donald Trump. As for Michael "we've had enough of experts" Gove, his reputation as an intellectual shrinks further every time he opens his mouth.

But the sad truth is that this egregious pair do not stand alone. William Hague, the former Foreign Secretary, wrote last week that central bankers around the world have “lost the plot” for keeping rates close to zero.

The drum beat of intimidation is growing louder. The Prime Minister herself added to the noise with her sloppily worded conference speech, where she complained of the fact that money printing by the Bank of England had increased inequality and vaguely promised that “a change has got to come”.

The irony is that the clamour is coming from the Tories. When Jeremy Corbyn talked last year about “QE for the people” there was a tsunami of opprobrium from commentators complaining that Labour planned to interfere with the independence of the central bank. Yet when Gove or Hague or May spray their mud at Threadneedle Street the silence from the commentariat is palpable.

But the problem is not just political bias. What’s becoming clear is that an ominously large group of people simply do not understand what central bank independence means.

So let’s spell it out. Central bankers do not set their own mandate, which is to deliver 2 per cent inflation over their forecast horizon and financial stability. Those objectives are set by elected politicians. It is operational independence that the central bankers enjoy – they decide what levers to pull in order to meet that mandate.

One can question the wisdom of the decisions taken to that end, but the crucial point is that decisions are made by a panel of appointed experts, based on their independent reading of the evidence. There should be no political pressure.

If the likes of Hague were calling for a change in the mandate of central banks that would be one thing, perhaps even a reasonable thing. But they are not. They are attacking the central bankers, attempting to pressure them into doing what they want to see or saying what they want to hear. At the extreme end, the likes of Rees-Mogg seem to think central bankers should be little more than myopic cheerleaders for the economy.

I certainly don’t believe that Carney has some kind of papal infallibility. On the subject of the amount of capital private banks should be mandated to fund themselves with I feel he is seriously misguided and have written so many times. Yet I don’t think he should be sacked because I disagree with him. I don’t think he’s “lost the plot” because he reaches a different conclusion from me.

In the end this is not about whether individual policy decisions by central bankers are right or wrong. This is about the integrity of our democratic institutions, one of which, since 1997, has been the operational independence of the Bank of England.

The likes of Gove and Rees-Mogg casually trashed those institutions in the campaign – and they are trashing them again now. Far too many who should know better, including the Prime Minister, are standing in silence while the vandalism takes place.

Carney will soon have to make a final decision on whether to extend his tenure as Governor beyond 2018. He really needs to hear some full-throated support – indeed gratitude – from senior politicians and commentators in the coming weeks. Otherwise, it would not be terribly surprising if he decided to finally abandon the burning deck to the intellectual pygmies who started the blaze in the first place. And make no mistake, that would leave every one of us worse off.