In one sense, this is reasonable. Sterling's fall is probably a one-off event that should cause a one-off rise in import prices and therefore a one-off rise in consumer prices - something that will manifest itself as a temporary burst of inflation.
There are, however, at least three risks to this.
One is that higher inflation can raise expectations of future inflation.
Since 1999, the Bank has done a quarterly survey of the public's view of inflation. It has asked: what do you think the inflation rate has been in the last 12 months (which is not the same was what it has actually been)? And: what do you expect inflation to be in the next 12 months? There's a massive correlation between the answers to these questions - of 0.89 since 1999. Higher perceived inflation, such as in early 2008 and 2011 has been accompanied by higher expected inflation, and lower perceived inflation such as in 2015 has been accompanied by lower inflation expectations.
It's quite possible therefore that next year's inflation will raise inflation expectations. This is dangerous because these can be self-fulfilling; if people expect prices to rise, they'll raise wages and prices to protect themselves and so inflation really will rise.
A second danger is that the labour market has tightened, which could add to wage inflation. Granted, the unemployment rate is still over 10 per cent if we add in people out of the labour force who want a job. But the rate has fallen in recent years, which means there's less downward pressure on real wages.
Thirdly, the international environment is becoming less disinflationary. Commodity prices in US dollar terms have risen by 6 per cent since early August. And in the US wage inflation has been edging up this year. The UK won't be importing inflation merely because sterling has fallen. It will also be doing so because overseas inflation is slightly higher.
These risks help explain why gilt yields have risen recently. It's because markets suspect the rise in inflation might not be a one-off.
So far, this suspicion is only a mild one. The three-year break-even inflation rate has risen from 2.0 to 2.9 percentage points since January. This implies markets now expect the consumer price level to be 3 per cent higher in 2019 than it did at the start of the year.
However, this is still less than the rise you'd expect from a purely mechanical pass-through of the 17 per cent drop in sterling; such a rise would be around 5 per cent. This tells us that markets expect the impact of sterling's fall to be muted.
Muted by what? One thing is pricing to market: manufacturers, retailers and wholesalers will absorb some of the rise in import prices in the form of lower profit margins.
But there's another thing - weak demand. What will stop a sustained rise in prices is simply that consumer demand won't be strong enough to permit it.
While this might comfort those worrying about inflation, however, it is not so good for profit margins.
