Farage Fights Back

NatWest CEO's resignation follows apology from the BBC.

Stuart Mitchell/@IncMonocle

Once again Nigel Farage has taken on the establishment and in doing so has made a hugely positive impact for the country and ordinary citizens.

The boss of NatWest, Dame Alison Rose, has now resigned after the recent banking debacle we’ve seen play out.

It seemed inevitable that she would have to go, such has been the appalling treatment of Farage and shoddy response we’ve seen since.

This of course follows the BBC also apologising to Farage as they were forced to admit:

“We reported that the former UKIP Leader Nigel Farage’s bank account had been closed by Coutts because he fell below the financial threshold needed for an account.

“This information came from a senior source familiar with the matter after Mr Farage had put the story about his banking arrangements into the public domain, saying that the bank had political motives in closing his account.

“Mr Farage’s view was reflected in all our reporting and he has been widely interviewed across the BBC throughout. Since this original coverage, Nigel Farage submitted a subject access request to Coutts bank and obtained a report from the bank's reputational risk committee.

“While it mentioned commercial considerations, the document also said the committee did not think continuing to have Mr Farage as a client was ‘compatible with Coutts given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation’.

“Because of this evidence, we have since changed the headline and the copy on the original online article about his bank account being shut for falling below the wealth limit to reflect that the claim came from a source and added an update to recognise the story had changed. 

“We acknowledge that the information we reported - that Coutts’ decision on Mr Farage’s account did not involve considerations about his political views - turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage.”

This entire saga has frankly stank and well done to Nigel for pursuing this in the way he has done.

His response to this morning’s resignation has been:

“Dame Alison Rose has gone. Others must follow.

“I hope that this serves as a warning to the banking industry. We need both cultural and legal changes to a system that has unfairly shut down many thousands of innocent people. I will do my best to be their voice.”

To the Government’s credit, they have taken a pretty firm line on all of this with City Minister Andrew Griffith commenting this morning:

“It is right that the NatWest CEO has resigned. This would never have happened if NatWest had not taken it upon itself to withdraw a bank account due to someone’s lawful political views.

“That was and is always unacceptable. I hope the whole financial sector learns from this incident. Its role is to serve customers well and fairly - not to tell them how or what to think.”

Griffith had also recently made clear that:

“People should be able to exercise lawful freedom of expression without the fear of having their bank accounts closed.

“Yesterday I wrote to some of the UK’s biggest banks to express that this is a fundamental right & we will take the action necessary to protect it.”

And highlighting a wider problem on all of this as Farage himself has done, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch reiterated that:

“Freedom of Belief is protected under the Equality Act. Companies cannot discriminate against people over lawful views.

“There are many less high profile individuals whose accounts appear to been closed for this reason. I hope banks will look again.”

This is now a major issue in a society where we are seeing a dangerous push towards going fully cashless.

Nigel Farage has done a tremendous service in exposing and fighting back against this nonsense.