King's College London

Central bank independence is once again at the centre of public and political debate. Following the UK's recent inflation surge and criticism of the Bank of England's economic forecasting, commentators, politicians and economists have renewed questions about how much political pressure should bear on the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), an institution designed to operate independently of government. This tension between political power and institutional independence has been negotiated, unsettled and renegotiated by every new generation of Chancellors and Governors.

Untangling these tensions is something Dr Chetun Patel has spent years working on. An economic historian at King's College London and a former JP Morgan trader, his doctoral research examined the 1997 decision to make the MPC operationally independent. What sets Patel's approach to understanding the relationship between the Treasury and the Bank of England apart is his focus on the people, institutions and choices behind economic policies, rather than the policies alone.

This is also the thinking behind Chancellors and the Treasury: Managing the British Economy, a 15-credit Level 7 module developed through a distinctive partnership between HM Treasury, the Policy Institute at King's and the Strand Group. This course welcomes both Treasury officials and King's students into the same classroom, where former Chancellors, senior officials and economic policymakers share their first-hand experience directly.

Learning from the people behind the policy

While lecturing on the Chancellors and the Treasury short course, Dr Patel's approach to teaching economic history rests on a simple conviction: it is an art, not a science. While markets and models can be described in equations, the decisions that shape them cannot, because those decisions are made by individuals under pressure, with careers, reputations and personal judgement all in play.

Indeed, it is the humanity of the Treasury that inspired this course. After the 2008 financial crisis, Lord Macpherson, then Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, asked for a course on the history of the Treasury, its institutions and the prime ministers who had shaped it. It was not conceived as an academic exercise, but rather was the request of someone who wanted the next generation of Treasury officials to properly understand its history.

Macpherson approached King's College London for this course because years of high staff turnover had eroded the Treasury's institutional memory, a weakness the 2007 to 2009 crisis had thrown into sharp relief. He had searched elsewhere in the country and found nothing that matched what he needed, so he came to King's instead. It set the pattern for this partnership, and for how we work with government more broadly: building what's actually needed, not adapting something off the shelf.

This people-first approach creates a learning atmosphere that is reassuring for learners of all backgrounds. While the economic content of the course might be daunting for those from a humanities background, for example, Dr Patel has centred his course around individuals and institutions rather than models and equations. This way, the economics arrives first as narrative. Understanding why a Chancellor made a decision, and who was in the room when he or she made it, is a far more accessible way in than any textbook definition of monetary policy. By teaching this way, Dr Patel makes historical concepts interesting and relevant, building a rhythm that keeps returning to one question: what does this tell us about today.

The course, originally designed by Professor Jon Davis, moves deliberately from theory to history to hands-on practice: it begins with the theoretical background to how the Treasury responds to crisis, moves through the history of the Treasury, its Chancellors and its relationship with successive Prime Ministers, and only then turns to practical immersion in key decisions such as Bank of England operational independence or the Great Financial Crisis. By the time participants reach that practical work, they already understand the forces at play.

Participants work through case studies, including materials as recent as the Covid crisis. They hear directly from a panel of practitioners who lived and influenced the events being studied, including Lord Macpherson himself, alongside Jessica Pulay, Chief Executive Officer of the UK Debt Management Office, and Ed Balls, former Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury and shadow chancellor. This is history walking, with one course lecture even taking place within the Chancellor's Room at HM Treasury, where New Labour signed off on the creation of the Debt Management Office and granting Bank of England independence.

Together, these elements form a marriage of theory and practice. Participants examine the historical evidence, hear from those involved, and test what past decisions can teach policymakers facing pressure today. The results speak for themselves: 80% of the last cohort who have found employment are now working in government-related jobs, including two in full-time posts within HM Treasury.