The Bank of England served up another delicious surprise for gilts investors this week.

The minutes of this month’s meeting of the monetary policy committee revealed that Mervyn King, the Bank’s hawkish governor, had been on the losing side in a vote to extend quantitative easing. Mr King, who has only been in the minority three times since he took charge of the Bank in 2003, has built up a reputation as a man determined to crush inflation. So his sudden dovish move, suggesting he is prepared to risk prices racing higher to ensure the economy does not sink like Japan in the 1990s, was a shock.