DR SWATI DHINGRA, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, is the first Asian woman to be appointed an external member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). That means she helps to decide whether the Bank’s interest rate goes up or down. So far she has shown she is more of a dove” – that is, she seemed keen to keep rises as low as possible when inflation appeared set to cross the 11 per cent barrier in the autumn of 2022.
What she is not keen on is Brexit. Before the parliamentary vote in December 2019 to leave the EU single market and customs union, Dhingra wrote with a colleague in LSE’s Brexit Economics series: “From an economic perspective, the best policy would be to cancel Brexit.”
That makes it distinctly odd she was appointed to a three-year term on the MPC beginning 9 August 2022 by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor – and he is known to be a Brexiteer. Perhaps he wanted a fresh voice in the deliberations of the Bank of England. Once upon a time it was caricatured as the sanctuary for men in dark suits who wore bowler...
