Today, the Bank of England announced that interest rates will remain at historic lows, as long as unemployment remains above 7%. Mark Carney was careful to communicate that reducing unemployment was “not a target” - the target remains inflation, and if inflation starts to rise then so will interest rates.

Our masters in the political and business elite always prefer to talk about us as consumers, rather than producers, because it obscures the real structure of power. Nowhere is this more apparent than in discussion of inflation. To a consumer, inflation is a measure of rising prices - but to a producer, inflation is a measure of rising wages. The two are always closely tied.

From the Great Depression to the late 1970s, British governments accepted that they should target full employment. By the 1970s, this caused a new crisis - if you know that there are plenty of other jobs you could take, you will not hesitate to demand better pay, better conditions, and more respect. Strikes were common and inflation was high.

Their early solution, under Thatcher, was to target a certain level of unemployment, to keep wages down. That language wasn’t very popular, so by the 1990s central banks took to targeting inflation - with unemployment as an “unavoidable” consequence.

Readers of a certain vintage may remember that back in 1998, then-governor “Steady” Eddie George was astonished by widespread outrage at his comment that “lost jobs in the North are an acceptable price to pay to curb inflation in the South”.

What Mark Carney told us today is that the current 7.8% unemployment rate is too high, but that 7% might be as low as we want to go. He’ll wait and see what effect that has on wages.

Thanks, Mark.