An answer from my wife who works in UK finance and spent the better part of the day dealing with this decision:

_The short answer is, this is still the best tool they have to deal with inflation, but it’s a blunt tool.

A lot of the inflation is driven by external factors, but part of what they’re trying to do, it prevent an inflation spiral where higher energy and food prices feed into a higher cost of other goods… labour… Etc.

Q: Will it work?
Her A: At this point they are very late [as others have said here] and increasingly looks like the only way this works is if they hike rates to a level that forces a recession [yay /s]._