Were it not for the upcoming budget, interest rates could have been cut

Perhaps it's not surprising that, the day after Guy Fawkes night, the Bank of England held off from lighting any economic fireworks at Threadneedle Street on Thursday.

No interest rate cut . No dramatic change to the economic forecast.

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After all, the budget is coming up in only a few weeks and it threatens to be a very big one indeed, chock full of tax rises and spending cuts that could cast a pall over economic growth. As it usually does when something like that is looming, the Bank chose to pull its head back, turtle-like, into its shell.

But there's no escaping the fact that rather a lot is going on beneath the surface, both at the Bank and the economy itself. We are, for one thing, reckoning with the consequences of a tra