What the Bank of England governor actually said

The recent speech in Scotland by Bank of England governor Mark Carney about what makes an optimal currency union was, of course, reported almost entirely in terms of  what hints could be extracted from it either to support or oppose the case for a "Yes" vote in the Scottish Independence referendum later this year.

So pro-independence politicians and newpapers reported it along the lines of "We've known this all along, Mark Carney is confirming what the 'Yes' campaign has been saying" while Unionists have presented his speech as a torpedo which holed the economic case for Salmond's proposals below the waterline.

Neither of these interpretations is entirely justified, though the issues which Mark Carney raised about the pooling of sovereignity which is required to make a currency union work need to be more effectively addressed by the Scottish Nationalists than they have yet managed.

However, I think that the comments he made, in which he discussed the possibility of a currency union between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK by comparison to another currency union - the Euro - should be as important to those with an interest in the European Project as they are to Scots and others with an interest in Scottish Independence.

You can read the full text of his speech here at the Bank of England website, the URL is

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2014/speech706.pdf.

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