Given her disastrous six weeks in office, the revelation that Liz Truss considered sacking Andrew Bailey during her brief tenure as Prime Minister is hardly a scathing indictment of the leadership team at the Bank of England. Against the backdrop of economic chaos triggered by Ms Truss and her equally fleeting Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, singling out Governor Bailey is akin to Ahab giving Ishmael a ticking off for failing to adjust tack during the doomed pursuit of the great white whale.

That, however, is not an exoneration of the Bank’s underwhelming track record which was laid bare last week by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The brutal verdict of his review, which puts forward 12 detailed recommendations for improvement, has reignited the debate over the extent to which the BoE’s failings have exacerbated the cost-of-living crisis.

READ MORE: What is the Bernanke review and what did it find?

From the miscall in May 2021 that price pressures would be “transitory” and then underestimating how high they would rise, to then overestimating the scale of inflation in August 2022, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has been losing her faculties. These miscalculations have been accompanied by dramatic errors on pay growth and economic output, with the economy slipping into a technical recession at the end of last year as consumers and businesses clamped down on spending in the face of higher interest rates.

Latest figures showing that the UK economy grew slightly in February have raised........

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