Nigel Farage’s bank accounts were closed down after Coutts, a company 39%-owned by the taxpayer, decided his views “do not align with our values”, documents obtained by the former UKIP leader show. The Telegraph has the story.
A reputational risk committee ‘exited’ him after considering a dossier detailing Mr. Farage’s comments about Brexit, his friendship with Donald Trump and his views on LGBT rights among many reasons he was not “compatible with Coutts”.
The background briefing paper even made reference to Mr. Farage’s friendship with Novak Djokovic, the former Wimbledon champion, as evidence that he was not as “inclusive” as the bank.
Earlier this month, the BBC and the Financial Times reported claims that the reason Mr. Farage’s accounts were closed was that they fell below the financial threshold required by the bank. The BBC quoted sources “familiar with” the Coutts decision.
Yet in the 40 pages of documents released to Mr. Farage after he made a subject access request to Coutts, the bank repeatedly says he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.
Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Farage accuses the private bank of “lying” about the real reason he was cut off, saying the documents show that the decision was politically-driven.
He describes the file as a “Stasi-style surveillance report” and notes that the word Brexit appears in the report 86 times – which, he says, “perhaps tells us all we need to know”.
“Between 2014 and 2016, when I first banked with Coutts, no problems ever arose. After Brexit became a reality, everything changed,” he writes.
Minutes of a meeting of Coutts’ Wealth Reputational Risk Committee held on November 17th 2022 state: “The Committee did not think continuing to bank NF was compatible with Coutts given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation. This was not a political decision but one centred around inclusivity and purpose.”
Mr. Farage has said Coutts told him he was not being treated as a Politically Exposed Person (PEP) – a legal term for customers who are deemed risky for political reasons – but the dossier specifically states that he is one.
Mr. Farage writes: “Whoever at Coutts thought it clever to feed friendly media outlets outright lies about me sorely misjudged the situation.”
The document contains 39 mentions of Donald Trump, and Mr. Farage said: “The fact that I support Donald Trump is part of this charge sheet.”
It says he is seen as “xenophobic and racist”, repeats claims that he was a fascist in his schooldays, and says he said things in the past that are “distasteful and appear increasingly out of touch with wider society”.
Mr. Farage writes that the dossier “reads rather like a pre-trial brief drawn up by the prosecution in a case against a career criminal. Monthly press checks were made on me. My social media accounts were monitored. Anything considered ‘problematic’ was recorded. I was being watched”.
He is not the only Right-wing figure to have been denied banking facilities. Tory peers have disclosed that their children have been told they cannot have an account after banks made reference to their parentage, and dozens of other people have had accounts closed without explanation.
Mr. Farage writes: “This story is not just about me. You could be next. … if this situation is left unchecked, we will sleepwalk towards a China-style social credit system in which only those with the ‘correct’ views are allowed to fully participate in society.”
The Coutts committee decided to put him on a “glide path” to being ejected, with his personal and business accounts to be closed when his mortgage deal ended this year.
Mr. Farage now says he cannot get an account with any other bank, having been turned down by 10 banks since Coutts withdrew its services.
Members of his family have also been refused accounts by other banks, and one family member was told his or her account was being closed.
Coutts, whose customers include members of the Royal family, is part of NatWest Group plc, which is 39% owned by the taxpayer following the Government bailout of the company in 2008.
Farage tweeted a video about the revelations, saying “I now have evidence Coutts lied to me”.
Worth reading in full.
Toby Young writes: “Not a political decision” – That‘s a very revealing comment and one you hear often from enforcers of woke dogma. Their ‘values’ and ‘purpose’ aren’t ‘political’. Oh no. They’re self-evidently morally correct and anyone who doesn’t share them is completely beyond the pale. I don’t think this is a deliberate sleight of hand. Rather, the way in which the woke mind virus spreads within an institution is that the infected aren’t aware they’re infected; they think they’re well and everyone who doesn’t agree with them is infected. It’s an ideology that is believed by its adherents to be non-ideological, thereby enabling them to enforce it without thinking they’re doing anything ‘political’ and without feeling any corresponding need to defend their actions.
Stop Press: Read about Dame Alison Rose, the first female executive of NatWest, who is responsible for steering the banking group towards saving the planet and embracing equity, diversity and inclusion.
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What does that tell you – after all a bank if it was merely a financial insitution wouldn’t talk in that way. It is absurd and needs legislation to stop it from happening ever again. It is also absurd from the point of corporate law when you see where this leads.It is designed to tie the system up in knots you have to be canny about such attacks.
They don’t trust us, we don’t trust them. There are far more of us than there are of them.
Don’t know about everyone else but I won’t lend these people my respect until they earn it. Sooner or later they’re going to take a fall that they won’t recover from.
The enemy’s downfall may yet come as they show themselves for what they are.
And the Chancellor is where, exactly, while this is transpiring?
The Tories hate Farage but have to be ‘seen’ to take action.
Let’s watch what happens next …
The Convict party will do nothing next. And when Starmtard kneels and takes power, the rest of us get debanked one by one….
This terrible behaviour by Coutts indicates it is not fit to manage any individual’s money. Their focus should be entirely fiscal and not political and definitely not ideological.
But the nice thing is It don’t matter. When they screw up commercially, they’re going to expect to be bailed out by the taxpayer. They’re only private while the sun shines on them and while they can privately persecute people for political wrongspeak. The telling statement (paraphrase) is really Mr Farage’s public statements of opinion conflict with the values and purpose of the bank. And this purpose of the bank is obviously not banking.
Coutts behaviour and other banks too is completely unacceptable. The City Minister says he agrees something needs to be done. Ig the government really wanted to change this it could be done in 24 hours.
The regulator the FCA and PRA should have dealt with this. The CMA (competition) should look at it because banks seem to be colluding.
Indeed, Hunt & Sunak should be calling in the CEO and chairman of the bank for a dressing down and demanding their heads on a silver platter.
I would like the Government to refund me my share of my taxes that were used to bail this rank institution out, if we all request it and close accounts with them, perhaps they might learn a very valuable lesson.
“I would like the Government to refund…”
Too damn right.
In effect Coutts, part of a failure of a banking group, have the bloody nerve to dictate terms and pick and choose customers and yet their staff constitute part of the failure.
Chunt needs to do his job and summon the whole bloody executive board to No. 11 for a severe talking to. The Chairman to be taken aside for a one to one and a reminder of who pays his wages.
Unbelievable.
More tyranny. Even more so since a large chunk of the bank is owned by the taxpayer. I’m ashamed to say that I bank with another member of the group, Nat West ever since I trotted along to the university branch clutching my grant cheque in my teenage mitt and opened my first ever account. How things have changed.
I’m in the same position. I’ve been with NatWest properly since I opened my student current account in 1994 (I had a Piggy Bank savings account with about £20 in it from the age of 10!!) I had a fantastic personal manager who looked after my entire family, on and off, for 25 years fight from his junior assistant days. He got made redundant last year. I’ve never heard from any replacement since, although I’m paying for premium banking (I don’t have anything close to premium banking funds, but my parents’ personal manager took me on because he’s known me for over half his life!)
It will be a a faff to change all my accounts to someone else, but I’m angry enough that I’d do it. Trouble is, the entire banking system has adopted this tyranny. Worse, they control the politicians and the corporations.
They used to say ‘shoot the lawyers!’ It’s the bankers who are the problem now and they can destroy any of us whenever they like. God help us if they force a CBDC on us!!
I’ve just come back here after spending half an hour or so looking at what is available for a personal bank account. I am, once again, enraged by how this story is playing out and strongly minded to close my current and savings accounts very soon. It will be a wrench after 46 years and I suppose my main concern will be on the degree of wokeness and social justice activism that I will encounter. I’ve just looked at very popular new bank who burbled on about fossil fuels and climate change. I wonder how many of their management and other employees have purple hair and personal pronouns.I suppose one lesson is not to get sentimentally attached to an institution and to be prepared to drop everything and move on when required, which it looks like I am going to do.
It is an unfortunate sign of the times where industries and services strive to be the best at everything that has nothing to do with the core reasons for their existence. Banks are supposed to do banking, the NHS is supposed to do something relating to health, the list goes on. While the west is concentrating on being nice (in their eyes) and not on the core needs of the economics and social order, the rest of the world is taking over the trade dominance the west once had. Ask the EU how the trip to South America went, not well by all accounts.
The “faff to change” is exactly the reason why banks are so arrogant. They know this and weaponise it for their own benefit.
If I had a NatWest account I’d be closing it.
Banks shouldn’t have “values” with which their customers should “align”. They are there to look after other people’s money, provide financial services – and that’s it.
I wish I had a Coutts account so that I could cancel it – but I’m not rich enough (even though I self-identify as a billionaire).
“The Coutts committee decided to put him on a “glide path” to being ejected, with his personal and business accounts to be closed when his mortgage deal ended this year”
The principles being applied here were of the highest and most noble variety, but not quite strong enough for Coutts to take any financial hit themselves (ie by forgiving any remaining mortgage payments in order to close this ideologically verboten account down asap).
Shocking and shameful behaviour in every respect.
‘Glide path’ makes me think of the Liverpool ‘Care Pathway’ that only led to squalor and death!
It’s like ‘streamlining’ means sacking people and ‘behaviours’ means brainwashing people to act in a certain way. Corporate speech, without meaning to be too hyperbolic, is the language of the sort of people who call gas chambers ‘disposal units’.
When I was growing up, all the dystopian science fiction was about giant right wing corporations controlling everything through naked financial greed. The dystopia we now live in is one where corporations have become international communist governments with effectively their own legal systems (‘values’), where behaviour that’s entirely legal in your country can get you sanctioned, fired and un-personned by a corporation and prevent you working for anyone else.
The outstanding issue is that in spite of all the publicity, Nigel Farage still can’t get a bank account. Moreover, the bank has been caught out spying and lying while providing confidential information to a corrupt left wing state broadcaster with a history of harbouring sex perverts. There are so many red flags here that it’s unbelievable!
Legislation won’t solve this: it’s the equivalent of putting a plaster on a cut finger while the patient’s femoral artery has been slashed. This is a cultural issue where banks (and other corporations) are in effect operating their own legal systems and surveillance apparatus. What next? A NatWest ambassador to the UN?
I’ve always been wary about anti-trust, because it can be abused, but the global banking giants need taking on globally. One country isn’t enough when organisations can switch their headquarters. Hedge funds’ proxy voting rights need to be relinquished and organisations such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Deutsche Bank, NatWest, Barclays and others need breaking up. And will someone actually find out what the ___k PwC actually does??!! 😉
Politicians on all levels – local, devolved state and national – need to be screened for their links to organisations and many need to be banned from standing for office. Estate agents being allowed sit on local councils has long been an issue, for example, but now we’re at the point where entire national administrations are made up of people from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsch Bank. Politicians such as Emmanuel Macron pal around wiht Alex Soros. Moreover, everything is being bought up by giant organisations. I traced my local bus firm’s ownership to Deutsche Bank and the Ontario Public Sector Workers’ Pension Fund, which has its fingers in dozens of businesses.
We simply cannot continue to be ruled by unelected supranational organisations.`The lesson of the last few years is that the bigger an organisation, the easier it is for it to be captured by extremist ideologies. There needs to be a great reset all right, but not Klaus Schwab’s one.
Tragic that I don’t bank with Nat West. I may open an account with them just so I can close it again.
“Tragic that I don’t bank with Nat West.”
I very much agree.
We did manage to shut down a Yorkshire B S account a few weeks ago though and PayPal lost my business for good over the Toby / DS issue.
As the saying goes:
‘Every little helps.’ 😀😀
Cuntts, oops sorry! I ain’t got a million 🖕
It’s worrying if banks can check peoples social media accounts to decide if they want them as customers. I keep a very low profile on twitter, Facebook etc. partly for this reason. However I wonder what else banks check, e.g. internet browsing history. Does making regular comments on a site such as this mark people as someone a bank doesn’t want as a customer? I make lots of comments on MSN expressing climate sceptic views and opinions about Islam, when I can get past their automatic moderator. Does this make me a marked man? I’m not going to stop and if needs be I’ll keep the small amount of money I have under the mattress even if it makes life hard for me.
Coutts is part of the NatWest Group – 40% owned by British Taxpayers since we bailed out the oh so virtuous “b”ankers in 2007/8.
I reckon close to half of the NatWest Group’s customers will hold views which are similar to Nigel Farage when it comes to Brexit, immigration “woke issues” and a great deal more. Is NatWest going to cancel all of them.
This is the Social Credit System in action: don’t conform to the woke and you will be cancelled.
Another issue is that this is just banks at the moment. What happens when water, electricity and gas people start cutting off consumers?
“The disclosures from Mr Farage that his accounts appear to have been closed because his views did not align with Coutts suggested that customers who do not agree with the bank’s worldview may not be tolerated.”. This, folks, is the new definition of ‘inclusivity’
This case demonstrates we are already living in a social credit system. It’s unacceptable to refuse banking services on the basis of political beliefs. Even more so when the bank in question is ultimately 39% owned by the Government. Then it becomes essentially a state sponsored social credit system, and suddenly we are far more like China than we would like to believe.
This morning I clicked on the article in Mailonline and the app crashed.
5 times.
This didn’t happen on any other article.
I would ditch NatWest, but all the banks have fallen to this kind of behaviour. My folks went to see one of their bank’s personal managers and, rather than wearing a suit and behaving in a polite, formal manner, he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and introduced himself by talking about his LGBT background and child abuse history. Unprofessional, but apparently a requirement under new rules so customers don’t ‘unintentionally’ insult or demean a staffmember through micro-aggressions or some crap. I wouldn’t trust that person’s advice. Sorry, but I’m old-fashioned!
I mean, look at all of us: can our banks see what blogs we subscribe to? Can we be debanked for financially supporting the Daily Sceptic? I’m with the Daily Sceptic and the Daily Wire (Ben Shapiro’s conservative media site, which attracts a lot of religious conservatives.) Given Christianity is increasingly being treated as evil by businesses, could I be de-banked? Could a ‘programmable’ CBDC stop me from subscribing to a US media site if it blacklists the site? These are questions that are going to have to be asked now, because it seems governments are playing catchup to these communist organisations play-acting as capitalist ones. To use an Ayn Rand reference, the banks are run by the James Taggarts of this world, not the Midas Mulligans.
In the USA, there are still lots of small banks as well as bigger federal ones. The UK has allowed giant organisations to buy out everything small and make them subsidiaries, so no one knows who really owns what anymore.
Coutts’s claim that Nigel Farage’s views are not held by wider society are farcical, given the Brexit vote. What they’re saying is that his views aren’t held by their bubble of Islingtonite and TUC, hedonistic contemporaries. Most of them likely have no idea what life outside the church of non-millionaire cultural Marxists is like.
“Ongoing reputational risk” means “being seen to serve the wrong kind of people by those with power and influence. No more, no less: our ethics are based on what those in power think of us.
So name your social injustice, and you can be sure these lickspittles will be endorsing it for their “reputation’s” sake.
National prejudice against the Irish, or against blacks? Then it’s fine to put up a sign saying “No blacks or Irish,” or decent people will think you serve riff-raff. Nothing political, you understand.
Witch burning come back into fashion? “Sorry Madam, you’re an unkempt old woman, so we can’t open an account for you because people might think we support witches.” In real life, of course, it’s more likely to be vicars or people with crosses, who might hold, or be thought to hold, those doctrines now deemed unacceptable in a modern democratic society by those whose opinion decides what is acceptable or not.
Democracy cancelled owing to whatever global crisis now requires it? “Sorry, you’ve tweeted in favour of democracy, which is a view unacceptable in a modern democratic… oh, wait.”
Thing is, I doubt anyone even knew Nigel Farage banked with Coutts. It’s hardly like people put the name of their bank on social media or on their email!!
There is a parliamentary petition with the subject “Require banks to give a specific, contestable reason before closing an account” at this link: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/640488
The Conservative government are happy with the situation that conservatives are cancelled or they are incompetent and can’t tackle the regulators or build the regulation required.
Don’t blame the banks, blame the government and the regulators. Banking licences should be suspended.
Can’t we blame both?
The banks control the governments and the regulators.
Should the Fruit Shop allow me Brussel Sprouts anymore? After all I did vote to leave the EU, and I question all aspects of the pseudo climate science and it’s silly solutions to a non existent problem. ———Maybe I should “question my thinking” though as I do like some tasty sprouts with my grog.