The Bank of England carried on Thursday with what’s now among the longest easing cycles of the post-War period, cutting rates by 25bps.

It was another nail biter: The vote split was 5-4. I’ll make the usual joke about hating to be the guy (Andrew Bailey) in charge of herding these cats: “Good morning everyone, is there any chance — any at all — that I’m going to get something I can call a consensus today, or are we doing the 5-4 thing again?”

Everyone who voted against the cut wanted a hold, arguing that disinflation in the UK “had slowed” in recent months. In a testament to just how confused this situation really is, Alan Taylor wanted a half-point cut on the notion that in fact, “underlying disinflation continued.”

Thursday’s move was the fifth cut of the cycle, which began a year ago. (Oh how time flies when you’re miserably divided.)

When Bailey put a 25bps cut to a vote by itself at this week’s meeting, he got a three-way split, which is to say the BoE actually failed to reach a consensus. So, he “invited” the MPC to pick a side: Either you wanted a 25bps cut or you wanted a hold. Taylor settled for a quarter-point cut in the second vote, and that was that.

If you’re wondering when the MPC last failed to reach a consensus on the first vote, the answer’s “never.” Remember: The BoE only won its independence in 1997. So, although the institution itself is among the oldest of its kind anywhere in the world, monetary policy independence is a relatively new thing in the UK. Never in the 28-year history of the modern MPC has the committee required two rounds of voting.

Bailey euphemistically described the decision as “finely balanced.” He’s employed that description before. The forward guidance was noncommittal on the future trajectory of rates, other than to say they’re “on a downward path.” Suffice to say the bank’s sticking with the “gradually and carefully” approach which, as illustrated by the Deutsche Bank figure on the left, below, is set to produce the most drawn out easing cycle since at least 1958 by the end of Q1 2026.

The figure on the right, above, shows how little easing the BoE’s actually delivered since beginning the normalization process a year ago.

Policymakers in the UK will be mostly forgiven for the confusion. After all, the UK’s had arguably the roughest go of things among G7 economies in the 2020s. Between the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and Liz Truss (and yes, it’s grimly amusing that Truss’s short-lived stint at No. 10 is remembered as a macro bane on par with a plague and a shooting war), it’s been a tough decade for the Brits.

Headline inflation in the UK’s back up to 3.6%, and the new forecasts accompanying Thursday’s decision saw the BoE mark up their inflation projections meaningfully and across the entire horizon.

There’s the chart. It’s, uh, funny if you find humor in macro-forecasting gone awry. The pale blue dots show the new forecasts.

Some might suggest cutting rates while simultaneously forecasting near-4% inflation (i.e., double the target) is contradictory, but again, there are so many macro crosscurrents in the UK that you can make a semi-plausible case for pretty much any policy path you want to pursue.

“CPI inflation is forecast to increase slightly further to peak at 4.0% in September [and] fall back thereafter towards the 2% target,” Thursday’s policy statement said. “The Committee remains alert to the risk that this temporary increase in inflation could put additional upward pressure on the wage and price-setting process.”

Anyway, write your own jokes. I feel bad for them, frankly. If there were degrees of impossible, the BoE’s job in 2020s would be impossible cubed.