In the hours after Britain voted to leave the EU, there was a hole where political command should have been. David Cameron quit as prime minister. His plausible successors weighed their options in the dark. Victorious Eurosceptics premiered the blank expressions they have since honed. George Osborne went quiet as chancellor of the exchequer. Even the country's European commissioner prepared his resignation.

Into this eerie void, equipped with a lectern and baritone that suggested Morgan Freeman as the soothing US president in a disaster movie, Mark Carney appeared. The governor of the Bank of England made £250bn ($A400bn) of funding available to financial institutions as they adjusted to "today's events". It takes some craft to play down a shock while making handsome provisions for it.

Financial Times