Some of Baker’s views are well off the mainstream. He believes, for example, that central banks are complicit in state-run economic growth, which is tantamount to “monetary socialism” and must be disbanded. As he describes how the global monetary system is “essentially a big trick of trust.”
He believes the cost of living crisis is likely to lead to a heated debate on fiscal and monetary policy. “High inflation plus rising interest rates will indeed lead to misery for millions of people. And the answer is, of course, free markets, strong property rights, stable money and low taxes. And the Conservative Party will have to rediscover its ability to deliver these things, “he said.
“I believe we are heading for a bond market storm as a result of rising inflation and rising Bank of England interest rates. Boris Johnson will face a choice between drastically reducing costs or changing the bank’s mandate.
In 2020, former Chancellor Sajid Javid and former Treasury Secretary Lord O’Neill, in what Baker described as an “apparently coordinated way”, called for the Bank of England’s inflation target to be removed in favor of nominal gross domestic product. . Baker is worried that this idea will be adopted to maintain quantitative easing.
“You can continue to devalue the currency by printing money to the point where people start to worry that you will never stop when the currency collapses. If the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Finance are stupid enough to move to a monetary system that allows money to be created in an environment of higher inflation, we can destroy the currency. That’s on the table. “
In his parliamentary evaluation committee, Baker had to write an essay on why he was a conservative. He had just read Friedrich Hayek’s essay Why I’m Not a Conservative. “Basically, I just put it back on the page. And they told me, “This is one of the best essays we’ve read!”
In fact, he voted for the Liberal Democrats in his first general election and became a Eurosceptic only after the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, which he described as a “mortal sin”. As a Christian, he has no problem with shared sovereignty, and as a classical liberal, he supports the free movement of goods and people. For him, Brexit is above all a matter of democratic accountability.
“I have always understood that leaving the EU will have negative sides and difficulties. As much as I hate customs documents, I hate to have SPS disputes [sanitary and phytosanitary] measures [on food imports] in Northern Ireland and all the others, these disputes are worth having in order to uphold the principle that the public gets the government they vote for. ”
It was this principle that led him to become one of the so-called “Spartans” – the 28 Tory MPs who voted three times against May’s Brexit deal. But his refusal to compromise does not mean he is not reflexive. “I am filled with regret and complaint that our country has turned out to be so bruised and divided. I didn’t like it either [referendum] campaign a lot. I especially didn’t like it [Leave] bus [emblazoned with the promise to spend the £350m ‘sent to Brussels’ each week on the NHS] and I said it during the campaign, which was controversial. People seem to have forgotten that. “
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