The Bank of England's gloomy forecast for inflation and the UK economy

The Bank of England has warned that inflation will peak around 13% this year and the UK will fall into recession. Alex Rankine reports.

Andrew Bailey
Inflation was rising in the UK even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
(Image credit: ©Getty)

The Bank of England has set off “the most piercing of warning sirens”, says Faisal Islam on the BBC. Last week the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) raised interest rates by half a percentage point to 1.75%, “the largest interest-rate rise in a quarter of a century”, while forecasting that inflation will peak at 13% later this year.

Even more shocking, it is now predicting that the UK is heading for “a recession as long as the great financial crisis and as deep as that seen in the early 1990s”.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.