LONDON, April 18 Reuters The pound firmed on Thursday, taking advantage of a rare bit of dollar weakness and the pushing back of expectations of Bank of England rate cuts to drag itself further from Tuesday39;s fivemonth low on the greenback.

Sterling was last up 0.17 on the U.S. currency at 1.24755, managing a rare two successive days of gains, after dropping to 1.2405 on Tuesday, its lowest since mid November.

Changing expectations of central banks39; rate policies has brought currency volatility back in recent weeks, and, like most currencies, the pound has been a victim of the dollar39;s strength across the board, as resilient U.S. data and sticky inflation cause markets to give up on earlier expectations of a Federal Reserve rate cut in June.

But there have also been two important data points for the pound this week, which have both led to markets slightly pushing back their expectations for the first rate cut from the BoE, now seen as only just more likely than not in August.

Tuesday numbers showed less of a fall in wage growth than economists had forecast, albeit with a bigger rise in unemployment, and Wednesday figures showed annual consumer price inflation fell to 3.2 in March from 3.4 in February, a slightly smaller decline than expected.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley, who still see the BoE cutting earlier than most of their competitors do, pushed back their expectation for the first rate cut from May to June.

A lot of factors piled up in recent weeks our…