PM Gordon Brown admitted today that Britain was in a recession, following a speech to regional businessmen by Bank of England governor Melvyn King, where he said we are too. So what have Melvyn and his chums on the Monetary Policy Committee (given the sole responsibility to fix interest rates by Brown when he became chancellor in 1997) been doing in the interim? Sod all, is the answer. King and his academic economist colleagues (with the honourable exception of US member David Blanchflower) have been fiddling while Rome burns. They haven't got a clue about the real economy - people's jobs, houses, expectations - so, by keeping interest rates too high for too long, they're running the risk of turning a recession into a depression. That wise old owl Ken Clarke, Tory chancellor under John Major, was always sceptical about divorcing the business of interest rates from politics, even while acknowledging that politicians has often cocked things up. Putting the Bank in charge worked in the early years of the Labour administration, when sensible pragmatist Eddie George was in the driving seat. King, though infinitely more clever, just keeps getting things wrong. Will someone make him see the light?