Labour incredulous at timing of King criticism mervyn Labour reacted with incredulity on Thursday after Sir Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, publicly endorsed George Osborne's "textbook response" to the financial crisis on the day that voters across the country went to the polls. In a BBC interview, Sir Mervyn said the economy was showing signs of recovery and suggested that proposals by the last Labour government to tackle the deficit had not gone far enough. The governor was criticised by Andy Love, a Labour member of the Treasury select committee, for providing ammunition to the Tories on a day when voters in about 5,000 council seats - and the London mayoral contest - cast their ballot. "This is a very unwise intervention by the governor as voters go to the polls," Mr Love said. He is compromising his position by once again backing George Osborne's economic plan. People close to Ed Miliband said he was astonished by the timing of Sir Mervyn's remarks in a BBC interview but declined to be drawn into a public row with the governor. Labour's leader is hoping for gains of 500 or more seats across the country, but a final opinion poll gave Boris Johnson, the Conservative candidate, a six-point lead over his London mayoral rival, Labour's Ken Livingstone. Sir Mervyn also came under fresh fire from influential MPs after he said that although the Bank of England had already carried out a review of its performance in the crisis in 2008, he was "very happy to carry out [further] reviews of the responsibilities we were given" if requested by the government. The 2008 review the governor cited was a limited technical consultation document on tools for money market operations which did not assess the quality of decisions taken by the governor or the BoE at the beginning of the crisis. His reference to that review did not impress Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury committee, who said that if the governor had really wanted a thorough review, he would have instigated one. The Governor suggests that a review would be undertaken if specifically requested. The Treasury select committee has repeatedly called for one ... The review is still needed. As the Governor himself said, it is important for us all to learn from the mistakes that have been made," Mr Tyrie said. A Treasury spokesman on Thursday said that any decision on a review was for the BoE to make, but pointed out that only the BoE of the tripartite authorities had not examined its role in the crisis. Sir Mervyn's speech also drew fire from some former members of the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee. Sushil Wadhwani, an MPC member between 1999 and 2002 said the governors claim that he wasn't blind to what was going on in banks before the crisis "has raised some eyebrows when, in August of 2007, he was arguing that "our banking system is much more resilient than in the past"."