In its most recent e-mail poll, completed on 27th March, the Shadow Monetary Policy Committee (SMPC) decided by six votes to three that UK Bank Rate should be held at ½% when the official rate setters meet on Thursday 5th April. The three dissenters all wanted to raise Bank Rate by ¼%. In addition, two of the members who voted to hold in April had a bias towards rate increases in the near future. Several of the ‘hikers’ also had a bias towards further rate increases subsequently. This represented the most hawkish position that the SMPC had adopted for some time. It reflected the views that: 1) money-market rates were so far above Bank Rate that the latter risked irrelevance; 2) some normalisation of Bank Rate up to, say, 2% was appropriate
