The Nigel Farage-Coutts debanking fiasco has thrown up many troubling aspects of modern British society. The first issue is that, without the knowledge of their customers, the banks have taken it upon themselves to select who should be their customers on certain criteria even though – for certain basic banking services- discrimination on any grounds is illegal. In this sense, Farage has done the public a great service by highlighting his own case, which in turn has prompted thousands of other bank customers to reveal that they too have been debanked for no obvious reason from other banks as well as NatWest.
The second problem is that the banks have decided they have the power to collate confidential information on their clients without their knowledge, and to drop them if their values do not suit those of the bank, as the Coutts dynamite dossier on Farage showed so vividly. There are of course cases where gathering information on clients is essential, such as customers suspected of money-laundering or terrorism. But that their information gathering appears to also extend to standard customers beggars belief. The third issue raised by this move by banks to debank – in itself rather ironic – is that having a bank account is the most basic of utilities, and it is impossible to exist today without access to what in effect has become electronic banking.
It is clear that NatWest does not yet realise the seriousness of the situation it finds itself in. Do Sir Howard Davies and the board of NatWest which, as recently as Tuesday night, had “full confidence” in Dame Alison Rose recognise how far-reaching and potentially destructive the current crisis is becoming?
Does the rest of the banking community appreciate that it is involved too? Does the whole business sector understand that the mania that gripped NatWest – and its Coutts subsidiary – is exercising an equally powerful influence across every sphere of capitalist endeavour and that there is no redress to be obtained from regulators, since it was the regulators themselves who systematically spread the toxins of ESG and DEI throughout the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem?
When the public saw the legendarily discreet royal bank Coutts lit up like a fairground in rainbow colours, with an aggressive political slogan emblazoned across its front, it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that something had gone badly wrong and that institutions which were pillars of business had become not only politicised, but also infantilised.
NatWest is caught in a crisis of its own making, a crisis created by Dame Alison. Her fixation on ESG and DEI created the culutre in which some senior staff obviously thought it acceptable to ask staff for their views. This has produced a disaster. A long and painful process of recovery at RBS, topped with healthy profits today – remember banks always make money when interest rates rise – has now been undone. And all because of virtue signalling, of the most crass and unconvincing kind. Of all the institutions to promote itself as inclusive in Britain to promote itself as “inclusive”, was there a more implausible candidate than Coutts, with its minimum requirements of £3m in savings or £1m in investment or borrowing for acceptance as a customer? In other words, to bank at Coutts you must be a millionaire. So, why was such an institution promoting itself as “inclusive”?
The scandal goes way beyond Nigel Farage. NatWest simultaneously embarked on its own diversity and inclusion scorched-earth policy, to the extent that 10,000 people are known – so far – to have been “de-banked”. Having scythed away all the ground-cover plants that were not to their taste, they became emboldened to go after the tall poppy by taking out Nigel Farage.
To describe that as a bad career move would be an understatement. But the lengths to which Coutts went in pursuing its vendetta against the former leader of UKIP is deeply sinister. Farage has described the document he forced Coutts to disgorge via a Subject Access Request as a 40-page “Stasi-style dossier”. It is a fair description. Its micro-investigative research into every offence against the Remain cause, unrestricted immigration and climate orthodoxy goes far beyond the amount or type of information any bank should hold regarding a customer.
It is a measure of its intrusive extravagance that it even referenced a letter written by a teacher at Dulwich College to the headmaster, more than 40 years ago, asking him not to make Nigel Farage a prefect. Where does that stand in terms of data protection? It provokes the thought: if the King and the royal family bank at Coutts, what level of intelligence concerning their affairs has its out-of-control Reputation Committee amassed?
The dossier was casually littered with insults about a bank customer – “xenophobic”, “racist”, “a disingenuous grifter”. Its text also suggested that, as part of Coutts’s diversity crusade, it has recruited illiterates: “the media consequences are unknow [sic] should he chose [sic] to go ‘public’…” It was also instructive to see those currently running a major bank denounce Farage for his “Thatcherite beliefs”. Is Thatcherism now a crime ?
At the local level of NatWest, clearly Sir Howard Davies and the members of the board who backed him in his foolish attempt to retain Dame Alison must go and the same applies to Camilla Stowell, the hatchet wielder in Nigel Farage’s case. Likewise, if the bank is ever to recover its credit, all the members of the reputation committee that has destroyed the bank’s reputation and everyone involved in drafting the dossier on Farage should depart.
The question that must be asked is whether diversity drivel is resulting in the employment and promotion of staff according to politiically correct criteria, rather than ability. If so, and this is happening everywhere in the financial system, the British economy will surely lose its competitive edge, with disastrous results for living standards, also being driven down by green levies and net zero impositions.
There has to be a serious, not cosmetic, cultural change throughout the banking system, including the regulators. How can business and the public rely on the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) to expel such extraordinary prescriptions from institutions, when it was the FCA that enforced their adoption in the first place? Not just banks, but businesses of every kind have been deluged with handbooks, sourcebooks and directions from the FCA, promoting ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policies, to ignore which is to invite a poor rating.
The alarming reality is that every area of capitalist activity has been captured by a movement that has brainwashed a hard core of people, while the sensible majority has been afraid to speak out. But anyone deprived of a bank account is effectively removed from society. Coutts’s move against Farage was a political attempt to neutralise a leading, non-establishment conservative. It also undermined legislation which makes it illegal for any bank to discriminate on grounds of a customers’ political views, or indeed, on any other grounds such as on the basis of their gender, their religion or any other identity criteria. Similar initiatives had already been launched, e.g. by PayPal against Toby Young and his Free Speech Union.
When we hear former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis claiming that Nigel Farage is falsely representing himself as a victim, we should ask how well she would survive without a bank account. There is nothing invented about Farage’s predicament; indeed, an issue that should be given more prominence is his rejection as a potential customer by 10 other banks, when he is known to be innocent of the charges levelled by Coutts. Could anyone ask for a better illustration of the extent to which groupthink has displaced competition in the world of capitalism?
It is also worth noting that, despite its apologies to Farage, Coutts has not offered to reinstate his accounts, offering instead an Economy Class account with NatWest. That is characteristic of this new black-balling phenomenon: when it is faced down and discredited, it will go through the motions of technical apology, but cling self-righteously to its original intentions. Britain faces daunting challenges in a viciously competitive world. If we are to have any hope of creating wealth and improving living standards, we have to remove all the grit that is clogging up the capitalist system, in the shape of political dogma and the cultural demoralisation of our people, beginning in schools.
There is one potential positive move that might emerge from this calamity. Hopefully, we will see a new generation of banks – whose purpose is to serve their clients, particularly small business owners – emerge from the fall-out, or indeed a switch back to building societies or other credit institutions. Credit comes from the Latin, to trust.
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