This podcast is sponsored by Canacord Genuity Wealth Management,

award-winning wealth managers who go above and beyond to support and guide you.

Visit candewelth.com to start building your wealth with confidence.

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the spectators' daily politics podcast.

I'm Natasha Faroez and I'm joined by Kate Andrews and Isabelle Hardman.

The Bank of England today have opted to keep interest rates at their 15-year high.

Kate, is this a sign that they've hit their peak?

Something that there are some signs that interest rates have peaked now.

The fact that the Monetary Policy Committee voted six to three to hold rates at 5.25%

was not as tight as that first-fit to hold rates, which was five to four.

Capital economics thinks it's all but certain that interest rates have peaked now.

Market expectation is about that they've peaked but the Bank of England is very clear in its

report this morning that there are plenty of factors that could lead to changes and they're

not going to try to predict them and that the potential for the inflation rate to go back up

because of conflict in the Middle East, for example, is something that's cited.

And what they're really clear about is that we shouldn't expect to see an interest rate cut

anytime soon. The good news for the government is that they're most up to date for

costs such as that Rashisi Neck is going to meet that pledge to have inflation by the end of the

year. The bank thinks in Q4 the rate will fall to just below 5%, which will just be meeting Rashisi

Neck's target. The really grim news out of the report this morning is what they think

was going to happen with growth across the UK. So they've revised their projections down for 2023.

They think there's going to be no growth next year. Look, a lot of these deem's-day predictions

...