In the long aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Bank of England finds itself unwinding a vast emergency intervention at a moment when the cost of doing so has become impossible to ignore. By selling government bonds purchased at near-zero interest rates into a high-rate environment, the Bank is locking in losses estimated at £120 billion while simultaneously pushing UK borrowing costs to their highest levels in nearly two decades. The tension between central bank independence and fiscal responsibility — long treated as a settled question — is now an open wound, with economists and fund