STATEMENT: BoE holds rates at 3.75%, as expected; votes 6-3 (exp. 6-3), with Greene, Mann and Pill voting for a 25bps hike; APF gilt sales to be paused until April 2027

A hold with three dissenters voting for a hike is the mirror image of the more common dovish-split pattern, and episodes of this kind have historically mattered less for the immediate decision than for what they signal about the committee's distribution: named dissenters with prior hawkish form (Mann, Pill, and Greene have all leaned restrictive in past voting) tend to be read as an established bloc rather than a shift in the median. The distinction worth drawing is between a floor under the rate path and an actual hiking bias; a 6-3 split with the majority holding usually caps easing expectations at the front end without repricing the terminal rate, and past split votes of this kind have only moved the path durably when subsequent data pulled the majority toward the dissenters. The APF pause is the structurally significant element: halting active gilt sales removes a persistent source of duration supply from the long end, and prior episodes of QT deceleration have tended to tighten gilt swap spreads and flatten the back end relative to where issuance and sales otherwise implied, with the long-dated sector and the DMO issuance calendar the places the effect concentrates. Worth watching are the minutes for the majority's reasoning, any shift in language around persistence of inflation, and whether the next wage and services prints recruit a fourth vote toward the hawks, since that is historically how a dissenting bloc has become a majority.