At her first meeting as a member of the Monetary Policy Committee in 2003, Rachel Lomax voted for no change while everyone else voted for a rate cut. By this one act, the Bank’s brand new deputy governor for monetary affairs established her inflation-fighting credentials. She also sent a signal that she was not some kind of Gordon Brown stooge in the City, just because the Chancellor had appointed a long-standing senior Treasury official. Very Rachel Lomax, her fans would say.
Ms Lomax (who was born Salmon but kept her married name after her marriage, which brought her two sons, ended in 1990) then voted the same way as Mervyn King, the Governor, month in, year out until November 9. She was then the surprise voice of dissent in a 7:2 vote for a rate rise. In more than three years, however, Ms Lomax has never voted for a cut. That record will make outsiders take her doubts this time seriously and to suspect that other MPC members share them.
She followed the classic career path of the meritocratic elite of her time. A scholarship to a top private school led to Cambridge and 26 years at the Treasury before she moved on to be a vice-president of the World Bank and Permanent Secretary at junior departments of state before being plucked from Whitehall to the Bank.
While at the Treasury, Ms Lomax was private secretary to Nigel Lawson when he was Chancellor and drafted a speech making the case for the pound to join the European exchange-rate mechanism. As a deputy permanent secretary, she then had to watch as the Bank Rate was pushed up to 15 per cent on the chaotic day when sterling was thrown out, only to float better on its own. No wonder she has developed a strong preference for taking monetary decisions coolly and getting them right.