The Bank of England (BoE) has become the first major central bank to hike interest rates in the pandemic era, with the move coming in response to surging inflation as officials made clear their chief focus is to tame runaway prices even as they expect the Omicron variant to weigh on the economic recovery. The BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted by an 8–1 majority to raise rates by 0.15 percentage points to 0.25 percent, the central bank said in a Dec. 16 statement. While officials said the emergence of the Omicron variant poses downside risks to economic activity in early 2022, its impact on inflationary pressures remains unclear, with global cost pressures remaining “strong.” Consumer price inflation in the UK rose in the year through November at a pace of 5.1 percent, a decade high, with BoE economists expecting that to climb even higher. “Bank staff expect inflation to …