Eight–One for 4%, Nine–Nil for "At Least 4%" — and the 5% Inflation Peak Has $108 Brent In It.
The Bank of England raised Bank Rate 0.25 points to 4% at 12:00 UTC on an 8–1 vote, and the one member against was Catherine L Mann, who wanted half a point and 4.25%.
So on "at least 4% today" the committee was nine–nil, seven weeks after voting 6–3 the other way. All six September holders switched — Bailey, Breeden, Dhingra, Lombardelli, Ramsden and Taylor — so the majority did not beat the hawks, it moved to them. We published the arithmetic five and a half hours earlier and said two of six had to switch, with a distribution from 5–4 to 9–0; the number landed inside it and the sign of the dissent did not, which is the same error as the RBA margin two days ago, one layer deeper and ours. The path: the Market Participants Survey median in the minutes has 4% in November and 4.25% in February — the same February step a 9 October money-market report gave, and the stale 81% is now closed by a prediction-market tracker at 98.5 cents on 3 November, up from 80.5 in September. The finding that matters: CPI printed 3.5% in September and is forecast to reach around 5% by mid-2027, and the minutes put Brent at $108 a barrel over the fifteen working days to 27 October — nine days before publication, and about $13 above the $94.6 Brent settled at yesterday. The Budget is worth a quarter point by 2027 Q2; the oil move is not in the forecast at all. Norges Bank held at 4.5% two and a half hours earlier and said it is still prepared to raise.