BY ALEX STORY

Coutts lied. The BBC and the Financial Times, among others, amplified the lie. Nigel Farage’s bank account closure, they had said two weeks ago, was simply down to business. BBC journalists Simon Jack and Daniel Thomas incuriously wrote, “Nigel Farage fell below the financial threshold”. Financial Times correspondents George Parker, Robert Smith and Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan noted that Coutts had financial eligibility criteria. “Clients are required to save more than £ 3 million or invest more than £ 1 million”, they declared quoting anonymous sources. It was nothing more than a simple “commercial” decision. Nothing therefore to worry about.

Yet the identical wording and structure of the reports in both media outlets suggested an informal prior briefing by the bank. The hoped for message was clear: Nigel Farage was too poor to get a service at Coutts – once known as the Queen’s Bank and founded in 1692 – and fair game for the contempt the supposedly powerful feel towards Nigel Farage and what he represents.

However, the documents released recently by Coutts after prompting from Nigel Farage’s lawyers through a “special access request” to international rating bodies to clarify his status showed the exact opposite to what the bank initially stated and what the press subsequently reported. They lied through their front teeth. Worse, the bank attacked a loyal customer publicly, hoping to destroy his character with the connivance of a bovine media.

The truth, as usual, is enlightening. The as-of-yet faceless Coutts’ reputational committee members opined that Nigel Farage met the economic contribution criteria for commercial retention, i.e. he is wealthy enough to be a Coutts client. The real reason was that his views were not compatible with those of the bank. As the document states, “the committee did not think continuing to bank Nigel Farage was compatible with Coutts given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation”.

Farage’s views though are controversial only to the very few and held by the many.

Some bores will disagree and say that he is as popular as the number of seats he won for parliament – none so far. Others, fairer types, will recognise the difficulty of breaking into the political oligarchy that a first past the post electoral system supports and point to the referendum victory as Nigel Farage’s greatest political legacy – a modern version of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt. As an outsider, level-headed people will add, he won the biggest vote of them all, in support of the claim that he speaks for the many.

To the few, Brexit, mass immigration, suspicion about Covid lockdown policies and a rejection of gender politics are profane positions. This is why the reputational committee added that an overtly extremist act such as Nigel Farage’s account closure “was not a political decision but one centred around inclusivity and purpose”. Adding, with no shame or self-awareness, the most barefaced politically partisan opinion on him they could have made: “he said things in the past that are “distasteful and appear increasingly out of touch with wider society”.

It is only a matter of time before the Coutts committee members’ names are revealed and honest journalists start to trawl through the past of Dame Alison Rose and Peter Flavel, respectively Natwest and Coutts CEOs, for some distasteful, embarrassing and out of touch comments or behaviours. But having knelt to Mother Nature of Constant Climate Crisis and Stonewall, the LGBT propaganda engine in the United Kingdom, they hope to be spared the vitriol when their hypocrisy is eventually exposed.

By acting as they did, they have bought what they consider to be an insurance policy. As Saint Augustin wrote in 413 AD a few years after the sack of Rome by Alaric the Visigoth King, such people are “constrained by self-interest, not by the obligations of charity.” In short, it is not inclusivity they long for, it is exclusive access to power.

Indeed, everything about the document points to a wilful political decision, detached from any commercial consideration and oblivious to the fact that many of its own current and wealthy clients might hold views similar to Nigel Farage’s. Further, a proper private bank, in the normal course of play, worships at the altar of client confidentiality. Keeping data and information on clients private is the sine qua non of private banking. A private bank must, if it wants to survive, play the game of absolute discretion. It must under no circumstances connive with hyper-partisan news outlets to destroy the reputation of one of its clients and lie so publicly in the process. Without discretion and circumspection but blatant dishonesty, there is no private bank of which to speak.

Coutts drove horse and cart through the private banker’s ancestral modus operandi. And yet, Natwest, the mother ship, and Coutts’ lies are part of a wider and quickening revolution. Our institutions are working day and night to create a new morality, detached from our two millennia old one. And they are doing so by force.

Might is right. Humility is weakness. Pride is all.

They have no intention of seeking a consensus between what we, as a people, want and cherish, and their New Age and nihilistic Crusade. Brexit, mass immigration, questioning authority over wealth-destructive lockdown policies and rejecting the insane gender ideologies that permeate practically all our institutions is, from their perspective, the new Evil.

Precedent, rule of law, basic freedoms of speech and thought, consensus and political constraints are all roadblocks on the pathway to their nightmarish vision of a new world order. 

Our ancient moral principles must be erased regardless of what we want. Compromises with the plebs or what they like to call populists are merely a waste of time.

The treatment of Nigel Farage, winner of the Best News Presenter award at the 2023 Television and Radio Industry Awards last May, is not an isolated incident. It is an acceleration towards what he rightly fears: a China-style social credit system in which only those with the ‘correct’ views are allowed to fully participate in society.

This is not the United Kingdom many of us would recognise or want. But it is where we are heading. Our country deserves far better than the intellectual mediocrities who people our institutions and destroy blindly our rich inheritance.

Alex Story is Head of Business Development at a City broker working with Hedge Funds and other financial institutions. He stood for parliament in 2005, 2010 and 2015. In 2016, he won the right to represent Yorkshire & the Humber in the European Parliament. He didn’t take the seat.