Britain’s economy will need rate cuts sooner rather than later

Rate-setters at the Bank of England (BoE) are an unusually rowdy bunch, at least in public. At the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, virtually all its recent monetary-policy decisions have been unanimous. That has not happened at the BoE since interest rates began rising in late 2021. At their most recent meeting, on February 1st, a majority of the nine-member monetary-policy committee (MPC) opted to hold interest rates at 5.25%. But individual votes were cast to raise rates, to keep them flat and to cut them—the first such three-way split since the financial crisis.