This would mean that one of the first things the new Bank governor, Mark Carney, will have to do will be to write a letter to the chancellor explaining why inflation has overshot its target.
Chris Crowe at Barclays Capital warns that there is also a longer-term inflation problem. He expects CPI inflation to end both this year and next at 2.5 per cent. Inflation will, he says, "persist above the 2 per cent target in the medium term".
But this does not necessarily justify the Bank of England's tightening policy by raising interest rates or reversing quantitative easing. Mr Crowe thinks high inflation will be due largely to continued rises in utility bills, higher university tuition fees (which will hit the numbers again in October) and slow productivity growth. This is not the sort of inflation that can be reduced by depressing aggregate demand through higher interest rates.
The problem is that weak productivity growth has caused the trade-off between growth and inflation to worsen. There's not much that conventional monetary policy can do about this.
Higher inflation might, however, justify tightening policy if it raises inflation expectations, which in turn would keep inflation high. But there is little sign of this happening yet. Official figures next Wednesday are expected to show that wage inflation is around 1.8 per cent, less than a year ago, suggesting there's no chance yet of an inflationary wage-price spiral.
Equally, though, economists are unsure there's a case for more quantitative easing, despite the weakness of the economy. Ms Clarke thinks that with many at the Bank now sceptical about whether more QE would be effective, attention will focus instead on measures aimed more directly at getting credit flowing, such as the Funding for Lending Scheme.
