January 25, 2007 | posted by Michael Baxter in IABN |

Minutes later it all seemed to change. And, all of a sudden, some commentaters are saying that interest rates won’t be going up soon after all.

By minutes, we are not, in this case, referring to a unit of time, rather the publication of the minutes of the last meeting of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, which so unexpectedly upped the rate of interest earlier this month.

The shock news: four out of nine members voted against the rise.

That two of the members- Rachel Lomax and external member David Blanchflower - voted against was no surprise. They are well known for their dovish views, and have been cooing against the hawks at every meeting for some time. Even voting to lower rates on occasion.

But this time, they were joined in their cote by two other members. Does this mean that the camp in favour of raising the rate of interest is diminishing, suggesting a swift end to the phase, or is this simply a case of hawks and doves taking temporary cover before they return to their natural state?

It would appear that, on this occasion, some of the members who voted against the rise were not so much against the idea of upping rates, rather they felt the timing was wrong. Their no vote had more to do with tactical timing then a sudden ‘road to Damascus’ moment.