Forget fundamentals until well after the 15:00 GMT fixing is out of the way. The wholesale market is entirely fixated on executing orders for month-end, quarter-end and Japanese fiscal half-year end.
The prevailing theme is dollar selling across the board combined with a large EUR/GBP sell order still rumored to be executed later in the day. A large EUR/GBP buy order (the typical month-end demand from Buba) for a UK payment to the EU was executed at 12:15 GMT, catching the market the wrong way around.
