Today’s post looks at the news that Conservative MP and Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie, is to step down at the forthcoming election. Rather than cast aspersions on Tyrie’s political allegiances, the focus for this post will be, primarily, upon his role as Chairman of the Committee. In this role, Tyrie has developed a reputation for being meticulous and thorough when scrutinising the actions of political and business elites, and it is this that is important for our understanding. Therefore, after looking at Tyrie’s performance over the years in the role, the post will look at where Tyrie should go now that he is leaving Parliament, and also the importance of finding a suitable replacement. The caveat to this piece is that it should be a given that politicians could always do more in their roles. Scrutiny is great but, just for one example, the fact that hardly anybody was punished for the Financial Crisis and the endemic fraud that underpinned it is the m...

Yesterday, speaking in front of the Treasury Committee, the leading figures of the Bank of England (BoE) sat and faced many questions. Whilst there were many issues discussed, particularly with regards to the Bank’s navigation of economic waters since the referendum decision to leave the E.U., it is a comment by Monetary Policy Committee member Gertjan Vlieghe that serves as the central issue for this post. Speaking rather candidly about the strengths and weaknesses of the Bank, he alluded to a much wider issue, which has ramifications for all of society; when discussing the ability to foresee economic disasters, Vlieghe said ‘ we are probably not going to forecast the next financial crisis, or forecast the next recession. Our models are just not that good ’. The results of the Committee’s hearings relay similar messages, like that delivered by Andy Haldane, the BoE’s Chief Economist , who stated that ‘we know that people find risk hard to understand; I find risk hard to understand...