* Consensus still for 50 basis point cut to 4.0 percent
* Probability of greater than 50 basis point cut now almost one in three (one in five in Oct 30 poll)
* 10 economists going for 100 basis point cut, including many large sterling market dealers
By Ross Finley LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The Bank of England is still expected to cut interest rates by a half point on Thursday but the chances of a bigger cut are nearly one in three, with several large dealers now predicting a 100 basis point cut.
A Reuters poll taken Nov 3-4, following up from the usual pre-meeting Bank of England poll published last week, found that several large sterling market makers changed their call in the past few days to a 100 basis point cut at Thursday's meeting.
The Monetary Policy Committee, which slashed rates by 50 basis points to 4.50 percent on Oct 8 as part of an unprecedented global coordinated easing, has never cut interest rates by more than a half point since it was given policy independence in 1997. While all 62 economists polled forecast at least a half point cut, the growing number of calls for a larger move reflects increasing market bets and intense selling of the British pound in recent days.
It also is stark evidence of just how quickly the outlook for the UK economy has deteriorated, with most convinced Britain is now in recession and many fearing it will be more severe than the last slump that ended 16 years ago.
"The risks are skewed towards a larger cut, particularly given that at these levels interest rates are still too high for current economic and financial conditions," said George Buckley, chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank.
Buckley expects a half-point move but puts the probability of a bigger move at a significant 40 percent.
BNP Paribas, Bank of America, Citigroup, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, National Australia Bank, SEB, KPMG and IHS Global Insight are forecasting a 100 basis point cut, but many only came around to that view in the last few days.
The sudden urgency for an aggressive move from the Bank of England among forecasters comes partly on the perception that the level of UK rates, at 4.50 percent, is too high compared with other main policy rates and needs to come down quickly.
"We believe that rather than considering whether a rate cut bigger than 50 basis points will imply panic, the MPC needs to judge where the appropriate level of Bank Rate is," said Alan Clarke, UK economist at BNP Paribas, who has been forecasting a 100 basis point move for the past week and a half.
"We are increasingly confident in our view that the MPC will cut Bank Rate by 100 basis points ... and that interest rates will continue to fall to 2 percent by next spring, with risks to the downside."
Interest rate futures are mostly pricing in a 75 basis point cut, which is also the forecast of another seven economists in the Reuters poll, including those at Nationwide, New Star Asset Management and UniCredit MIB.
The news on the UK has been relentlessly negative, from manufacturing recession to slowing consumer spending to high street bank bailouts to crashing house prices as the world economy buckles from the global financial crisis.
Aggressive rate cuts by other central banks -- including the third interest rate cut in as many months from the Reserve Bank of Australia on Tuesday -- have also piled on the pressure for the BoE to get its own rates lower.
The Federal Reserve, which began aggressively cutting interest rates more than a year ago when the global credit crunch first appeared, cut its main rate another 50 basis points just last week to 1.0 percent.
(Polling by Bangalore Polling Unit; Editing by Stephen Nisbet)