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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Larry Elliott Economics editor

Weaker economy, higher inflation: Bank of England’s dilemma

Critics of the Bank of England, pictured, say it's being forced to play catch up after getting inflation forecasts hopelessly wrong.
A view of the Bank of England this week. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Turn up. Take the temperature of the economy. Raise interest rates. That’s the been the pattern from the responsible technocrats at the Bank of England for more than a year now – and they show no sign of stopping.

Between the depths of the global financial crisis in March 2009 and the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, interest rates were changed only five times, and three of those were in response to unexpected shocks: one after the Brexit vote in 2016, and two at the arrival of the pandemic in 2020. There was one period of more than seven years when interest rates were pegged at 0.5%.

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