The Bank of England looks set to raise interest rates to 3.5% or more next week, but policymakers seem to disagree on how much tightening is needed to tame double-digit inflation as the economy heads into recession.
Last month, BoE Governor Andrew Bailey said more rate rises were likely to be necessary, though fewer financial markets had priced in before that meeting, when investors were betting that rates would reach 5.25% in mid- 2023.
Two policymakers who voted against November's three-quarter rise - the BoE's biggest rate hike in over 30 years - warned that tightening would lead to an unnecessarily severe recession.
Financial markets are now priced in a 78% chance that the BoE will raise rates by half a percentage point to 3.5% on December 15, and a 22% chance of a rise to 3.75%.
The central bank's immediate concern is British consumer price inflation, which hit 11.1% in October, the highest reading since 1981 and more than five times the BoE's 2% target in October, up from 4.2% a year earlier.
The BoE fears labour shortages and other bottlenecks caused by the COVID 19 epidemic and Brexit will make inflation slow to fall, despite the fact that higher energy prices have been driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The Investec economist Philip Shaw said there was a 50 basis point increase that looks likely to be in our minds. The BoE has made it clear that inflation is too high. It is concerned about the tightness of the labour market. There are big risks to its projections. Bailey said that Britons must accept reduced living standards because of the energy price shock, but the country is in the midst of a wave of industrial action as trade unions try to limit their impact on their members.
Shaw views the 75 basis point rate rise as a one-off, after market turmoil caused by Prime Minister Liz Truss's short-lived government and new assumptions of more generous government support for household energy bills.
But HSBC economist Liz Martins said another 75 basis-point rate rise was a possibility, if official figures on economic output, inflation and the labour market were stronger than expected.
She said a first four-way vote split was possible because of a range of views on the MPC about how near BoE rates are to a peak.
A generous spin would note the highly uncertain outlook and celebrate the lack of groupthink. Martins wrote in a note to clients that it adds to questions about the BoE's willingness and ability to act decisively to address the current inflation challenge.
MPC member Catherine Mann has voted for larger rate rises than the majority this year, and remains concerned about the expectations of inflation over the medium term, which is well above the BoE's 2% target.
Last month, seven MPC members voted to raise rates to 3%, but Silvana Tenreyro voted for a quarter-point rise to 2.5% and Swati Dhingra for 2.75%.
Since then, Tenreyro has said rates should stay on hold so as not to push inflation well below target over the medium term, while Dhingra has said that an increase would cause an unnecessarily deep recession.
On November 3, the BoE estimated that Britain had entered a recession that would last until the end of next year and shrink output by 1.7% - a larger drop than recent forecasts and partly reflects elevated market rate expectations at the time the forecasts were made.
Financial markets are seeing BoE rates peak at 4.75% by the end of next year, while HSBC expects the BoE to stop at 3.75% in February and Investec predicts a peak of 4%.