In regular statements and press conferences, occasional speeches and media interviews, and cross-examinations at parliamentary committees, he has spelt out at length the bank's Brexit scenarios and the possible responses.

The media headlines have been lurid: lost incomes, crashing property prices, slowing growth, unprepared businesses. As a result, Carney has been accused of weighing in on politics – and politicising the bank. "Project hysteria," the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph has called it.

Brexit rouses animal spirits in Westminster like few other issues, creating a political minefield. The question is: has Carney tried to walk gingerly through – and been the victim of media beat-up – or has he donned his clunking Canadian snow boots and just waded in?

It depends whom you ask. Speaking after one of Carney's public appearances last year, leading Conservative Brexiteer MP Jacob Rees-Mogg was in little doubt: "The forecasts are so hysterical that they're very hard to take seriously. Unfortunately, he's a second-tier Canadian politician. Having failed in Canadian politics he's got a job in the UK, which he isn't doing well." Ouch.

Also unimpressed was Andrew Sentence, a former external member of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, who vented on Twitter: "The Bank of England Brexit analysis is highly speculative and extreme. It will add to the view that the Bank is getting unnecessarily involved in politics and that will further undermine perceptions of its independence and credibility."

High-risk strategy

Whether Brexiteers are too easily provoked, or whether Carney has been too ready to provoke them, it's had the commentariat asking questions. Is the bank's credibility and respect under threat because of its high-risk communications strategy on Brexit?


"Carney is seen to have become a puppet of a Brexit-hostile Treasury, lending the bank's good name to a political matter that lies beyond his remit," Jeremy Warner wrote in the Daily Telegraph last year.

And the Financial Times's Chris Giles echoed The Australian Financial Review's own impression that many in the business community are readily questioning whether Carney is sticking to his neutral and tightly prescribed remit. "It is his apparent desire to be centre stage that has done most to undermine confidence in Mr Carney," he wrote.

But in Belfast last week, Taylor was having none of it. Not long after the June 2016 referendum, he said, the FPC realised that its "stress tests" of banking system resilience would have to capture the economic impact of Brexit, including "the more drastic domestic possibilities".

"At no time did the committee consider these outcomes likely, though for many of us their probability has crept up to a level that means they can no longer be considered tail risks," he said.

Considered the most alarming risks

The bank had quietly and discreetly considered even the most alarming risks, he said, and had redacted meeting records to "avoid the appearance of political interference by the Bank". But Parliament's Treasury Committee had demanded to see the complete records, and eventually they were published in full.

"The message, curiously enough, is intended to be reassuring rather than apocalyptic. If these things happen, the Bank is saying, things which we do not expect to happen but believe might happen, the financial system will hold up. People are free to make what they will of the information that the Bank considers it possible that such things might happen."


Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says Carney is 'a failed second-tier Canadian politician'. Simon Dawson

He wasn't surprised that Carney and the bank had been accused of taking sides: in the Brexit debate, "it is hardly possible to open your mouth without being identified with one side or another". The bigger question was whether Carney should have opened his mouth. And on that, Taylor was clear: "The Bank strives to be neutral. That does not mean it should be neutered."

Taylor argued that the Bank of England now had much greater responsibilities, to avoid a repeat of the near-death experience of the 2008 financial crisis. These new powers were being exercised in a world where the banks had a profoundly different relationship with the public and politicians than previously. It was no longer possible for the bank to be a quiet, background presence.

Carney himself has said much the same thing. During a BBC radio interview last September, he reiterated that the bank's job was to consider all eventualities.

"If you're ready for what we just laid out, this worst-case scenario, then you're certainly ready for what's much more likely to happen," he said. "We have a responsibility to have the system ready for whatever happens … We didn't want to be pulled into exactly these types of conversation, but that's us doing our jobs."

Commentators worry that Carney has politicised the Bank of England and threatened its credibility. Jason Alden

Wilfully misunderstood?

So are he and his scenarios wilfully misunderstood by the media and Brexiteers? Or is he part of the establishment cabal, alongside the Treasury and big business, that wants to talk the country out of Brexit?


The fact that this debate has rumbled on for the past two years suggests Carney and his comms people haven't yet found a magic formula that keeps everyone happy – if indeed they can.

They might be encouraged that there was less Brexiteer push-back than usual against Carney's comments last Thursday. On the other hand, when Carney comes up in City conversations the tone is almost always critical.

He has another year in the job, and the Chancellor is probably already pondering on possible successors. Attracting controversy and criticism probably goes with the turf – it's just that the turf is particularly rocky right now.

Or, as Taylor put it last week: "Hard cases make bad law, as the lawyers say, and Brexit is a hard case if ever there was one".