Alex Wickham@alexwickham
Exclusive: Nigel Farage floats replacing Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey in a sign he could interfere with the Bank’s independence if he becomes prime minister.
“He’s had a good run. We might find someone new,” Farage tells @MishalHusain, whose hour-long interview with the Reform leader goes live on Bloomberg today.
Bailey’s term is up in 2028 but it’s Farage’s clearest indication yet that he’d emulate Trump in applying political pressure on the BOE.
In the full news-packed Bloomberg interview, Farage:
— suggests he’d abolish the Financial Conduct Authority: “They are utterly useless.”
— disowns the 2024 Reform manifesto: “I didn’t write it. I inherited it. We’re having a full rethink of everything.”
— says Reform will “probably go further” than the £50 billion of spending cuts pledged last time round, eyeing in particular the “explosion” in disability welfare cuts.
— vows “more radical” economic policies than in the manifesto. “We’re gonna make even bigger promises.” Timeline for lifting income tax threshold to £20,000 will come within weeks along with other new announcements on the economy.
— praises Trump’s ICE deportation raids but says “we’ll do it our way, not the American way.” No army or armed agents.
— pledges to “play hardball” with the EU to renegotiate the Brexit deal and “100%” end “catastrophic” alignment.
— says he is “struggling a bit” with his Anglican faith, adding that “if I was a more regular church goer, I probably would have defected to the Catholics”
— says he’d be a risk-taking and at times divisive PM. “Everything in life’s about risk. We need far more risk/taking… I think we’ve had too many unifiers and look, look where consensus politics has got us. Look at the mess it’s got us into. Of course, some people won’t like it, but that’s the way it is.”
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
