Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, said last year that the path of interest rates was likely to mirror the shape of South Africa’s Table Mountain: steep-sided but with a plateau at the summit. Judging by the Bank’s latest monetary policy report, Pill and the other eight members of Threadneedle Street’s monetary policy committee (MPC) are now only a few short steps from starting their descent from the mountain top. But they are not quite there yet. Two MPC members – Swati Dhingra and Dave Ramsden – already think interest rates have been held too high for too long, and so voted for the base rate to be cut from 5.25% to 5%. The real question is how long it will take at least three other committee members to join them. Not that long, judging by the comments from Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s governor. He said the MPC’s wait-and-see faction accepted that the 14 increases in interest rates between December 2021 and August 2023 were “weighing on activity in the real economy” but wanted to see more evidence that inflation would stay low before voting for a reduction. The fact that Bailey said he was optimistic things were...