Nigel Farage has been a wholly malign influence on British life. His championing of Brexit has made us poorer and less free. He's an admirer of the genocidal Putin and the treasonous Donald Trump. For all his claims to be a patriot, we wouldn't have seen his froggy green arse for dust if his media career in American had worked out.
But I'm uneasy with the enthusiasm for Coutts's decision to close his account.
Because, despite what right-wingers believe, the banks are not part of a woke blob. They are conservative organisations, and if they start refusing people accounts because of their politics, then it is left-wingers who will suffer more.
And I can see government and right-wing activists putting pressure on the banks. Why do Just Stop Oil activists have accounts with your bank? Ban them!
You can argue that companies have a right to decide who they do business with, except liberal have cheered on cases brought under human rights law to prove that is not the case.
It's impossible to function in modern society without a bank account, so everyone should have one. Even Nigel Farage.
Indeed, nobody should be barred from at least a basic bank account. But Farage does not have to bank with Coutts which clearly espouses higher standards than most. (Incidentally, where has all Farage's money gone? Millions must have passed through his hands over the last decade.)
ReplyDeleteIt is remarkable how swiftly government ministers have taken Farage's side. Where were they when banks were closing accounts wholesale because holders had Islamic names? (One assumes that was the reason - banks do not have to explain their decisions.)
Coutts closed Farage's account because having paid off his mortgage with them he no longer meets tha bank's financial criteria for banking with them (read: doesn't have enough money). The question was whether the bank wanted to bend its own rules for him, and it decided not to do so because of his character. This was entirely a matter for the bank, a pure business decision which as a private business it is entitled to make. He has been offered an account with its parent bank NatWest, the same sort of account that you or I would be able to get if we walked into one of its branches. He has declined and decided instead to go on about being "cancelled" because he can't get an account with a particular bank because he doesn't qualify for it under its rules.
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