Mortgage limits should be defended

When Tony Blair was first elected as prime minister in 1997 the first thing he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown did was to grant operational independence to the Bank of England.

Under the new system the Chancellor would set an inflation target and it would then be up to the Governor of the Bank of England to use monetary policy to achieve that target.

Prior to that change, the government of the day effectively dictated interest rate policy and this very often resulted in interest rates being taken down prior to an election to help the government of the day get re-elected.