Why can't Matt Ridley say the word 'bank'?

As Rats in a Sack predicted, the launch of Economic Affairs, the new magazine from the Institute of Economic Affairs under the stewardship of loony Brexiter Daniel Hannan, is already providing a platform for some of Britain’s most consistently wrong people to carry on being wrong.

Matt Ridley is an early contributor, and with characteristic lack of self-awareness. This is, after all, the man who once lamented Britain’s “democratic deficit” and the power of unelected officials despite having sat in the House of Lords as a hereditary peer.

Suggested Reading

Daniel Hannan takes Count Binface very seriously indeed

Rats in a Sack

His latest column returns to his familiar attacks on the UK’s move to decarbonise its energy system. Amid the usual complaints about electricity prices comes one unusual flourish: Ridley claims the current system has “sluiced £227.7 billion from energy bill payers to crony capitalists… who are laughing all the way to the pub”.

That choice of phrase is curious. Why “the pub” rather than the more familiar “the bank”? Perhaps Ridley was keen to avoid reminding readers of his own association with one. He spent almost four years as chairman of Northern Rock – a position coincidently previously held by both his father and grandfather – during which the bank became the first British lender in more than a century to suffer a bank run.