The Bank of England has had to navigate a difficult set of circumstances in its attempts to raise interest rates. As far back as 2014, Governor Mark Carney suggested that rate rises could come “sooner than markets currently expect,” only for those aspirations to be dashed. Indeed, the next move in interest rates turned out to be a rate cut, in the aftermath of the June 2016 Brexit vote. Then, after a carefully choreographed set of speeches indicating the time had finally come, interest rates were raised in November last year, with indications of more to come. The message was that the economy had sufficiently healed, ... (full story)