I should have been more precise in my response, given the post I was responding to was the one alleging financial links. There are no allegations of *financial* links with Trump at all in the dossier, just comments that Farage has agreed with him or supported him at various times. (Equally there are no allegations of *financial* links with the Djokovics').
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Nigel Farage and that bank account...
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I should have been more precise in my response, given the post I was responding to was the one alleging financial links. There are no allegations of *financial* links with Trump at all in the dossier, just comments that Farage has agreed with him or supported him at various times. (Equally there are no allegations of *financial* links with the Djokovics').
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<Smug mode on>
Called it last week!
<Smug mode off>
The correct result, of course.
Notable that the Tories - despite this all happening on their watch - took the right line on this story. Which isn't really hard to do, given the principles involved were two very basic and obvious principles:
- people shouldn't be debanked for their political views
- banks shouldn't leak financial details of their customers (whether correct or not) to the press.
Also notable that the fence-sitter-in-chief Starmer continued to, err, sit on the fence. If he can't support basic principles like these, then really what's the point of Labour?
SuspectUsual
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It’s remarkable how quickly the government got involved in this, including multiple ministers commenting on it and also Sunak in the last 24 hours.
Hardly “the people’s priorities” stuff
It’s as if Farage has some sort of hold over them
It is very much one of *my* priorites that we should be able to have freedom of speech and political opinion without being effectively removed from society. Without that ability you have precious few other freedoms at all.
Probably there is some cynicism from a government that allowed this to happen in the first place, but why not go down the correct path now? It's an easy win for them and it doesn't cost any money. You'd hope Starmer had the political instincts to have realised the same, but apparently not.
(Edit : I see Starmer has - finally - said in an interview this morning that it was wrong for Farage's accounts to be closed for his political views and that NatWest shouldn't have leaked information about him. Ok, he got there in the end, but what on earth took him so long? Tony Benn's quotes about signposts and weathercocks comes to mind).
Also, we own almost 40% of NatWest. That makes it our concern how it is conducting business.
He still has a strong platform and people who follow him. Whatever your opinion of him, I think he's done a lot of good here. Others have tried to expose this before but they haven't had the profile that Farage still has.
I see Farage is now talking about this in the context of social credit systems. Bringing the horrors of going down that path to the attention of more people can only be a good thing.
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I agree 100%. However, we still don't know what bank accounts Mr Farrage applied for and was denied. He was only 'being effectively removed from society' if he applied for and was denied a basic bank account. Anything other than that was a commercial decision taken by a (mostly) private company.
brad465
Veteran Member
This is my beef too, I'm not saying the Government shouldn't act here but if they are capable of responding here then they can do so for many other important issues too. It's also a requirement for a Government to multi-task, if they're not capable of that they're not fit for purpose.
Maybe on this occasion he was waiting for a conclusive outcome before making an opinion. All the facts haven't been known for much of the time this has been in the news, and there still are things not known. Now that apologies and a resignation have resulted it's clearer what has happened here, so speaking out is more sensible and less likely to lead to having egg on your face. While it's not quite the same, if a senior politician made an opinion on a defendant in a criminal trail before the jury had made its decision, this alone would be controversial (prejudicing a trial), but it would be even worse if the opinion was in contradiction to the final verdict and could even lead to that politician being on the wrong end of a libel case.
Has Farage actually spoken out for the many others who have had accounts closed for background reasons that don't get any publicity in this, something Peter Oborne highlighted has been a problem with the press? If he doesn't, and/or the press at large do not, it shows once again the hypocrisy of freedom for me, but not for thee.
I think he should be allowed to run his business too, and he says he's not been able to secure business banking anywhere. Business accounts appear to need the same protections as personal accounts.
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I managed to make an opinion straight away, I fail to see why Starmer couldn't. You can always talk abut the principle and say 'if that's what happened here, it was wrong', without having to be specific about a particular case. Waiting until everything has happened anyway is political cowardice, in my opinion. As I say, signposts and weathercocks.
Farage has, yes. Unusually, I watched his GBNews shows last week, and every time the issue was discussed, and with everyone he interviewed, he said something along the lines of 'this isn't about me, this is about the thousands of people who have written to me saying it has happened to them too.'
I've a great deal of respect for Peter Oborne so I'm pleased to see he's talking about this too.
Of course it would have been preferable if he'd spoken out about it before it happened to *him*, but very few people were willing to speak up when it was people like Katie Hopkins, or as Oborne has pointed out the Finsbury Park Mosque, being debanked for political reasons.
SuspectUsual
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I think I’ve read that he was offered a NatWest account when he was turfed from Coutts, but he turned it down
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt made it clear that Alison Rose had to go, but Nigel Farage is also right that serious questions need to be answered by NatWest's board - including its non-executive directors - who misguidedly supported Rose last night. They should have thought properly about this first, because supporting her when she would have rightly fired one of her underlings had they done the same thing was the wrong thing to do. It seems, sometimes, that these boards don't think but trot out anodyne statements without engaging their brains first.
For example (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-66296935):
For example (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-66296935):
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Businesses aren't granted the same rights and freedoms as people. Quite rightly I say.
The question is, did he give a toss about it before it affected him? If not, then he can hardly be held up as a "champion of the down-trodden masses"
SuspectUsual
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God, I feel dirty saying it given its Farage, but the bit I've added probably is necessary for balance
Yes, thank you. That is closer to what I was trying to say.
I think there are a lot of people who don't give a toss about bank accounts being cancelled because it is Nigel Farage who is affected.
Some people are probably pleased that he is having trouble with the bank.
But would they have the same attitude if it was a left wing politician who had their account cancelled, or an organisation such as Just Stop Oil?
Of course, we certainly don't want to go down the road similar to the bizarre situation in the USA where corporations are increasingly legally viewed as people.
But that's totally different from the right of people to own and run a legal small business, as Farage does. Are you seriously suggesting Farage shouldn't be able to do so, and if so, why?
As I said above, it would probably have been better if people spoke up when people like Katie Hopkins were debanked some years ago. But as essential as following the Niemoller principle is in theory, it isn't hard to see why someone in Farage's position may have viewed sticking up for say Katie Hopkins (or Tommy Robinson) as politically unwise.
Or quite possibly he really was unaware until fairly recently - it isn't something I was aware of occurring until a year or so ago.
The irony in all of this is that if Nat West had not closed Nigel Farage's accounts, then none of this would be in the public domain.
Until this issue became public knowledge, no-one knew that Nigel Farage banked with Coutts, and there would be no "reputational risk" in retaining him as a customer.
Whereas now their "reputation" in is tatters.
Indeed - rather a large fail for the 'reputational risk' committee! They're clearly not very good at their jobs - I bet they're very well paid too.
Oborne has been on about this for quite some time
www.doubledown.news
He makes the point that he hasn't been able to get the media involved but as soon as it was Farage the right leaning press went into overdrive
I have no time for Farage but Coutts (and to a lesser extent the BBC) got this horribly wrong and it's right that Rose left. Not sure, though, that Farage has been quite as hard done by as he makes out.
You have to question why nobody at Coutts seemed to have considered a possible FOI request from Farage
Nigel Farage: When Muslim Bank Accounts Get Closed, Nobody Cares | Peter Oborne
Welcome to the world of British Muslims
www.doubledown.news
He makes the point that he hasn't been able to get the media involved but as soon as it was Farage the right leaning press went into overdrive
I have no time for Farage but Coutts (and to a lesser extent the BBC) got this horribly wrong and it's right that Rose left. Not sure, though, that Farage has been quite as hard done by as he makes out.
You have to question why nobody at Coutts seemed to have considered a possible FOI request from Farage
Falcon1200
Established Member
It clearly was not a commercial decision however, surely a case of someone being 'cancelled' because of their views! I have no time for Mr Farage, but what happened to him, both the action and then the lies afterwards, were disgraceful, and if nothing else it has shone a light on the debanking process, hopefully to the benefit of others.
Indeed, I will certainly not be opening an account with Coutts any time soon......
Everything which has been released, which is of course too much, suggests that this was absolutely a commercial decision, but one which people delayed and were too scared to make because of the potential for a fuss. All of the other stuff really seems to be people defending the sensible and resolutely commercial decision which had been made. At the end of the day, having somebody not very rich going around boasting about how they'd got an account with you and making your extremely upmarket business look shabby is not in itself good for business, and putting an end to it is an entirely sensible commercial decision.
The fact that NatWest appear to have been able to get rid of a not-very-inspiring workaday CEO in the process is really just gravy.
Falcon1200
Established Member
Only if Coutts seriously believed that allowing Mr Farage an account was detrimental to their business because of his views; Which is doubtful IMHO, and in any case, until they cancelled him, very few people knew where he banked!
The opening paragraph of a Times article from 2019
"He is the man of the people, often photographed holding a pint in a pub and smiling broadly. But Nigel Farage banks with Coutts, the 327-year-old private bank whose customers include the Queen, and has his mortgage there, according to the title deeds to his home in Westerham, Kent."
Not common knowledge for sure - nevertheless out there
Not that that excuses Alison Rose's actions in passing that info on to a reporter
And then - as I suggested upthread - Coutts couldn't have handled it more badly - giving Farage more and more ammunition
ETA link.
‘Everyman’ Nigel Farage banks with Coutts
He is the man of the people, often photographed holding a pint in a pub and smiling broadly. But Nigel Farage banks with Coutts, the 327-year-old private bank whose customers include the Queen, and has his mortgage there, according to the title deeds to his home in Westerham, Kent.The bank has str
www.thetimes.co.uk
Paywalled but sometimes the first paragraph is visible
It falls into the category of "commercial decision" because banks aren't obligated to provide anything more than a basic bank account.
The banks who declined to provide full current accounts were well within their rights to refuse his custom for whatever reason they wanted.
As for the concept of "cancelling" people, one thing that many people don't seem to appreciate is that, while you have a right to express whatever views you might hold, you don't have a right to a platform from which to express them.
The opening paragraph of a Times article from 2019
"He is the man of the people, often photographed holding a pint in a pub and smiling broadly. But Nigel Farage banks with Coutts, the 327-year-old private bank whose customers include the Queen, and has his mortgage there, according to the title deeds to his home in Westerham, Kent."
Not common knowledge for sure - nevertheless out there
Not that that excuses Alison Rose's actions in passing that info on to a reporter
And then - as I suggested upthread - Coutts couldn't have handled it more badly - giving Farage more and more ammunition
ETA link.
‘Everyman’ Nigel Farage banks with Coutts
He is the man of the people, often photographed holding a pint in a pub and smiling broadly. But Nigel Farage banks with Coutts, the 327-year-old private bank whose customers include the Queen, and has his mortgage there, according to the title deeds to his home in Westerham, Kent.The bank has str
Paywalled but sometimes the first paragraph is visible
Point taken, but not many people were aware of those articles from The Times, so there would be very little reputational risk to Coutts from keeping him as a customer.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
It depends on your definition of "commercial decision", but the subject access request makes it clear that Nigel Farage's account was closed because of his views on various topics, not because of the amount of money in his account.
I was speaking more to the banks who declined to open a new account for him, but for both Coutts and those other banks it was a commercial decision in as much as, in their evaluation, the money to be made by doing business with him was less than the money to be lost by being associated with him.
Sure
But it was still out there so I think there has been some hyperbole here. And in The Times too! Having said that - as I said - Rose was completely wrong
Genuine question. Can you highlight the parts which you reckon prove it was a political decision. I am sort of catching up on this but the underlying point that I saw was about the mortgage which took his account below the lower limit for a Coutts business account
Coutts have handled this appallingly so I don’t trust them much. Feel the same about Farage tbh having seen him in the flesh when he was standing for UKIP
But they haven’t given him his Coutts account back which suggests a commercial decision
Thanks - and apologies if this has come up before
This article from Sky News gives some proof of the point I was making.
The subject access request is full of comments about Mr Farage being xenophobic and racist, and at one point mentions that he is an admirer of Enoch Powell, and friends with Novak Djokovic.
Many people will agree that he is xenophobic and racist, but Nigel Farage's friendships and views about politicians who died more than 25 years ago are nothing whatsoever to do with the bank.
As has been said several times over the past few days, access to banking is an essential utility in todays increasingly cashless society, and people should have a legal right to at least a basic bank account, as is the case in countries such as France and Germany.
SuspectUsual
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And Farage was offered a NatWest account to replace his Coutts one. He - not surprisingly - chose to decline their offer; probably a combination of not wanting to take something he perceived as second best, and wanting something to get on his soapbox about
He's certainly got himself in the press in a way his jaded and ever-less-popular populist opinions aren't really managing anymore. What I can't work out is why the government have been so keen to keep the story going, and giving more and more publicity to man who is very likely to take votes away from them on their extremist wing
Gloster
Veteran Member
Ill thought out opportunism to take everyone’s attention away, at least for a few days, from the continuing mess they are making of everything. It doesn’t matter what it is, if it diverts attention away, they’ll do it. Or maybe they are going to try another attack on the ‘woke’ lefty bankers. I don’t think it is planned, but at the moment it seems (to me) that nothing the government does is planned…at least I hope not. (You mean that it is meant to be this chaotic?)
SuspectUsual
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We rewatched all of The Thick Of It over the weekend, and this week I've seen everything reported in the news about the government through the prism of Malcolm Tucker. It makes it less unbearable
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