LONDON — Something extraordinary is happening in British economic life on the eve of the Bank of England’s Thursday meeting: everyone is saying the same thing, and they are saying it at the same time.

All 35 economists in one widely circulated survey expect the Bank to raise rates to 4 percent from 3.75 percent on November 5, the first increase in more than three years. Other polls find the same thing — a Reuters survey put 54 of 63 economists on the hike, and the stragglers mostly hedged rather than dissented. Financial markets priced the decision with the enthusiasm of a congregation reciting a well-known hymn.

“It is going to be a hike,” said one London-based economist, asked for his independent view.

“I, too, expect a hike,” said a second, from a different university, apparently unaware of the first.

“A hike,” said a third, unprompted, on television, nine seconds into an interview about the weather.

The unanimity is the story, because agreement is not what the profession sells. Economics has spent fifty years perfecting the art of the qualified disagreement — the comma that changes a forecast, the footnote that contradicts the abstract. An economist who has never once said “on the other hand” has not really lived. So a survey with a perfect score reads to the trained ear like a alarm.

"In my thirty-one years of forecasting, I have never seen the whole profession say one thing at once. I have seen the whole profession say the same thing slowly, one by one, each insisting he was first. This is different, and I have set my blinds accordingly."

The last holdout, reachable only through his department secretary, said he was abroad on sabbatical and could not comment on British monetary policy until November 10, when he expected to have thoughts. Asked whether those thoughts would differ, he said, “They will be about the hike.”

Markets meanwhile behaved the way markets do when the future has already been explained to them. Gilt yields sat. Sterling sat. The Bank of England, which has spent months carefully telegraphing the decision so that no one could possibly be surprised, arrived at the rarest condition in central banking: everyone already knew, and agreed, and nobody enjoyed it.

Thursday’s decision is expected at noon. His Majesty’s Treasury has no comment scheduled, largely because it has already given it.