LONDON, June 24 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Andy Haldane will leave a big hole. The Bank of England’s outgoing chief economist was alone in voting to reduce the total target amount of government bond purchases at his valedictory policy meeting, minutes showed on Thursday. It will take time to know if he was prescient, given uncertainty about how long global price pressures will last and whether workers who became temporarily inactive during the pandemic will resume job searches. But whether he proves right or not, he was useful in inoculating against groupthink.

The consensus in central banking read more and financial markets these days is that inflation will subside and that the future will look a lot like the past once pandemic-era distortions disperse. Outliers like Haldane, who last month warned of the risk that price pressures could become embedded in wage demands, are needed to ensure enough account is taken of any evidence to the contrary. Granted, he’s not the only original thinker at the BoE. But finding someone who is also equally talented at communicating in plain language will not be easy. (By Swaha Pattanaik)

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