Now that the Liberals have elected Mark Carney as their leader, and in so doing anointed him as prime minister, it’s a good time to look beyond the gushing reviews of those fawning over him.
His supporters point to his impressive resume as governor of both the Bank of Canada and Bank of England.
In the U.K., however, the reviews are less enthusiastic. In 2008, he was wooed by George Osborne, then-British Chancellor of the Exchequer, to head the Bank of England.
He arrived with an impressive track record: Harvard and Oxford educated; a Goldman Sachs banker; governor of the Bank of Canada in turbulent times. Yet, according to journalist Matthew Lynn, Carney didn’t live up to expectations.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Lynn said that in his eight years at Bank of England, “Carney was at best an indifferent governor and, at worse, a disappointing failure. Despite his huge salary of more than 600,000 pounds ($1.1 million Cdn.) a year, more than any of his predecessors had been paid, he seemed to have little feel for the role.”
He calls Carney the “epitome of a remote, globalized, technocratic elite.
“He’s very good at self-promotion, at collecting trophy jobs, and of course negotiating fabulously generous salaries and expenses for himself along the way. He is just not very good at delivering.”
It’s a view echoed by writer Iain Hollingshead in the same paper.
Carney was criticized for what some politicians viewed as dabbling in politics during the Brexit vote.
Hollingshead quotes Lord Moynihan, former chairman of Vote Leave, a group that supported Britain leaving the European Union: “He (Carney) was the perfect epitome of homus wokus. I thought he was a disaster as governor, taking the Goldman, Keynesian view of the world and flying blind when it came to predicting inflation.”
Hollingshead also quotes former Conservative cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg:
“Fundamentally, Carney is one of those people who think a small group of experts can run things better than a noisy, vibrant democracy.”
The gospel of St. Mark embraces Net Zero, a costly effort to reduce greenhouse gases. Right now, Canada needs to invest in defence spending, pipelines and energy infrastructure.
We don’t need Carney to send our tax dollars down a woke rabbit hole.