But surprisingly for someone so used to being in the spotlight, Carney is camera shy. Although he’s dressed for the occasion, in a trademark white cutaway collar shirt and grey tie more likely to be seen in Peaky Blinders than the Bank of England, he’s not keen to be photographed outside on a balcony.
“I don’t like posed shots. It’s not my thing,” he tells our photographer. The balmy weather and clear views aren’t enough to persuade the former Goldman Sachs banker – at first at least.
“I’ll give you a minute,” he eventually tells the snapper after seeing him folding away equipment in defeat. “He’s like a puppy dog,” jokes Carney – though he is still reluctant to stare at the camera, preferring a more ponderous pose.
It wasn’t always this way for the man brought up in Fort Smith in Canada’s Northwest Territories, the third of four children.
His father was a headmaster turned academic, a career path that his mother also returned to when she went back to university, resulting, Carney has said, in him growing up in a “house filled with books”.
But he isn’t just a bookworm.
A keen runner, he completed the London Marathon in just over three and a half hours in 2015, and played ice hockey as a teenager.
After completing his undergraduate degree at Harvard, he went on to receive a doctorate in economics in 1995 from Oxford University, where he met his British wife, the economist Diana Fox Carney.
He eventually became a British citizen in 2018, fulfilling a promise made when he accepted the governor job.
Carney gave little away about his personal life during his time at the Bank, though he was once asked by a group of schoolchildren what he would spend all the UK’s money on if he had the power to. His reply? Dairy Milk chocolate, tickets to watch his beloved Everton and lots of old music records.
Handpicked by former chancellor George Osborne to succeed Lord Mervyn King in 2013, he became the first foreigner to run the institution since it was founded in 1694. Carney, who was in charge of Canada’s central bank at the time, was wooed by a star-struck chancellor who changed the terms of the role in order to secure his man.
Carney originally agreed to serve a term of five years instead of eight. After Brexit, he extended this term twice, and left the Bank in March 2020, just before lockdown.
Carney led the Bank in the wake of the financial crisis, when its powers were increased. Most say he left the Bank more open and diverse than when he joined. Though others say he politicised what should be a technocratic role.
He also came under fire for hinting at rate rises but not following through, earning himself the infamous “unreliable boyfriend” moniker for sending mixed messages to British households.
Many believe Carney’s pre-Brexit interventions were too political. He warned ahead of the vote that it could tip the economy into recession, while separate Bank analysis said choosing to leave the EU would hit economic growth, stoke inflation and raise unemployment. To this day, Carney feels vindicated.
Today he’s keen to discuss interest rates and inflation. Though if he is reluctant to wade into politics, Carney is even more careful not to comment on what his successor, Andrew Bailey, should be doing at the Bank. “There are nine members on the MPC, they don’t need a tenth and certainly not one who used to serve on it,” he says.
