Britain finds itself once again caught in the slow grind of rising prices, as inflation climbed to its highest point in five months — a development that quietly unsettles the assumptions policymakers had built their patience upon. The Bank of England, which had held rates steady in the hope that price pressures would ease on their own, now faces a harder question: whether waiting is wisdom or complacency. In the larger arc of post-pandemic economic life, this moment reflects a recurring truth — that inflation, once embedded, does not yield easily to hope alone.