Britain is an unusual country. Prolonged sunshine (three successive days) makes front pages. Travel five or 10 miles and you’ll hear different accents, even dialects. But perhaps the biggest oddity is the outsized influence of our Treasury.
HMT is an international outlier in that it is home to both the UK’s finance and economic departments. These are two quite different jobs. The former often refers to a bean-counting operation, responsible for sound money and the smooth running of fiscal events. The latter involves a greater focus on fostering economic growth. There is, you may have noticed, sometimes a tension between the two.
