Right Carney barney

Conservative fogey Rees-Mogg duels with Bank boss on savings rate

IF the EU wants to be really bloody-minded over Brexit it could throw a Spaniard in the works.

Say the Germans want to import British sausages in preference to their own bratwurst.

As things stand, German customs officers check the odd pack to ensure it’s meat, not marijuana, and then send the full batch on its way.

But to be difficult, the EU Commission could decree that only one customs post should deal with British bangers – and locate it in Spain.

Teeth

Then they could insist every sausage is inspected. That would hold them up for months and they’d go off before the Germans could get their teeth into them.

Imagine repeating that with UK exports of cars, trains, boats and planes and we’d be in real trouble.

This is the kind of thing which keeps delightfully old-fashioned Brexit Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg awake at night in his doublebreasted pyjamas.

And that’s without the EU putting up trade barriers to nonEU goods should there be another economic crisis.

But Jacob had other worries when we met in a delightfully old-fashioned Birmingham hotel at his party conference last week.

Jacob and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney have already clashed at the Commons Treasury Committee. They’re now heading for another dust-up because Jacob thinks the Guv got interest rates wrong.

Low rates are good for home owners because they mean low mortgage payments but bad for savers, who get less income.

If saving is discouraged then that means financial institutions have l ess money sploshing about to c ushion against economic shocks.

So Jacob wants to see interest rates go up a quarter per cent every three months until they reach two and a quarter per cent by the middle of 2018.

That will make him unpopular with the middle- aged middle classes, who would see the cost of borrowing rise.

But savers, many of them elderly, will love it.

So would the “ordinary working people” Theresa May claims to be so fond of.

That’s because there would be less need for public spending cuts, which mostly affect them.

So expect another duel between the Mogg and the Guv.

Delightfully old- fashioned flintlock pistols would suit nicely. GOOD luck to Ireland’s London ambassador Daniel Mulhall, who has copped the trickiest job in Europe.

He has to negotiate his country’s new EU relationship with Brexit Britain.

His Excellency told Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire that the border between north and south must remain open. And he wants to maintain the common travel area for Ireland and the UK, which guarantees the free movement of British and Irish citizens between the two countries. Theresa May wants closed borders and an end to freedom of movement to deter EU migrants. That’s a circle which will be hard to square. Mr Mulhall says ruefully: “I’m going to need a PhD in Brexitology.”