Mortage rate vs base rate

drifter17a

All,

I am trying to understand the difference between base rate and mortgage rates.

I understand the base rate is the rate bank of england will charge high street bank when it lends money to them and typically banks change their rate to reflect this on loan and also mortgage.

my questions are:

does this mean bank has no money itself so consistently borrowing from government and lending it to business/people hence making a marginal amount as facilitator and business taking the risk on mortgage?

I see base rate is currently 4% and some lenders offer deals with initial 2 years rate of %4.2, I am thinking either they charge 0.2% which is very low or money is their/their investors and they are choosing to keep their mortgage as close as possible to base rate.

I see credit card rates have jumped fair bit but at the same time car loan has dropped. for instance when rates where 1.75% or so , APR was 13.9% from most dealers . now they are selling on apr as low as 7% . I am assuming they struggling to get customers/people not spending so lenders of personal/car loan which is risker that mortgage are taking more risks and lending at lower rates compared to base rate