Like Napoleon, Carney simply can’t get past his Waterloo

“That was a horrible song, sing us another one, just like the other one, sing us another one do-o..”

You know what comes next, don’t you? Someone steps into the circle of drinkers and pipes up with a ribald limerick. My turn. How about this?

There was a bank governor called Carney (called Carney!)
He was always full of old Blarney (old Blarney!)
Smartest guy in the room
He was like a mushroom
Kept in darkness and full of shitake.

Yes, the former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney is back in Canada, home of comedy, and giving one of his hilarious routines in which, grasp your sides, he gives Brexit what he deems a satirical kicking not for producing “a Singapore-on Thames” but, after Liz Truss briefly inhabited Number 10, “an Argentina-on-the-Channel”.

It’s the way he, erm, tells ‘em.

Let’s ignore, for a moment,  Carney’s time with the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. A time in which he dipped into her handbag and slung all the notes at everyone. Let’s ignore too, the lack of interest. We might even ignore my limerick, which isn’t much better but at least has a double entendre. 

It’s the sheer sniggering heedlessness that, well, I was going to say “amazes” but it doesn’t. It simply bores you. 

Like Napoleon stuck on St Helena, he simply can’t get past Waterloo. The most recent battle of Brussels was as, Bonaparte said of his own comeuppance, “an incomprehensible day”, “a combination of extraordinary Fates”, a battle “I did not fully understand”.

And still they don’t. Nor do they much try. Heedless to the fact that la Grande Armée lies smashed upon the field, defeated by “the sweepings of our jails” and “the scum of the earth” as Wellington described his beleaguered army and in much the same way as the likes of Carney think of the poor bloody voter. 

Heedlessness. The political philosophy of our times. Not just here in Britain  – where Net Zero, ULEZ, identity politics, mass immigration and so many other things are nudged, bullied, taxed and jemmied into people’s daily lives – but right across Europe. A Europe which, after years of fair warning to the heedless, was finally, shockingly and entirely predictably rejected as the de facto off-shore British legislature. 

Meanwhile, from Italy to Finland, the voter swings right and potentially right again via the AfD in Germany or Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France. 

All the while, the likes of Carney avoid anything so uncomfortable as some long-overdue introspection. It is easier to join the other know-betters for a good dinner and make sniggering remarks, heedlessly ignoring the clamour outside. 

I bet they’re serving shitake and it’s the rest of us who are left in the dark.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life