DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Nigel Farage may not be everyone’s cup of tea but banks’ attack on free speech must end now
Nigel Farage is patently not everyone’s cup of tea. Many – invariably the liberal elite – despise his strident opinions, on everything from Brexit through illegal immigration to trans ideology.
Yet nothing the former Ukip leader has ever said or done has been illegal or immoral. Indeed, his views are shared by a huge number of ordinary British voters.
So it is deeply sinister that Coutts has closed Mr Farage’s bank accounts as punishment for his political beliefs. Documents obtained by the Brexit Party founder show that the bank’s Orwellian-sounding reputational risk committee cancelled him as a customer because it said his opinions ‘do not align with our values’.
The vitriolic dossier makes clear, too, that Coutts lied by briefing selected journalists that Mr Farage was not rich enough to keep an account – a claim credulously parroted by an increasingly discredited BBC.
This episode – which is a deserved public relations disaster for Coutts (and NatWest, its parent company) – is both shocking and profoundly troubling.
Banks should not restrict vital financial services to customers purely because their lawfully-expressed views offend the woke orthodoxies incanted mechanically by so much of corporate Britain.
It is deeply sinister that Coutts has closed Mr Farage’s bank accounts as punishment for his political beliefs
Coutts lied by briefing selected journalists that Mr Farage was not rich enough to keep an account
Mr Farage’s ordeal came to light as he is a high-profile politician who justifiably kicked up a stink. But how many others have been ‘debanked’ without explanation on the basis of their political or cultural outlook?
This is nothing less than a chilling assault on free speech. In the modern world, a bank account is an essential – especially as we hurtle towards a cashless economy. Without one, it is virtually impossible to access basic goods and services.
People should not be afraid to speak their minds for fear of being financially ostracised. Britain is a democracy, for heaven’s sake, not a totalitarian hell-hole – at least for now.
And who do the big banks think they are? Corrupt and motivated by intense greed, these very institutions drove the financial system to the brink of ruin in the 2008 crash. They have some brass neck to sit in judgment on customers’ ‘values’.
Rishi Sunak has rightly condemned the financial bullying of Mr Farage. Now the PM must make it illegal for the banks to cancel anyone with anti-woke views
Rishi Sunak has rightly condemned the financial bullying of Mr Farage. Now the PM must make it illegal for the banks to cancel anyone with anti-woke views.
They are, after all, money-lenders – not self-appointed moral arbiters of what people can and cannot say.
Glimmers of hope
If the results of today’s by-elections are as disastrous for the Conservatives as predicted, it will naturally feed the narrative that their time in power is ending.
But two bits of good news offer glimmers of optimism. Inflation fell dramatically as food and fuel prices slid, raising hopes the worst of the cost of living crisis is over.
Tata will build its new £4billion electric car battery plant in Somerset, not Spain, creating 4,000 jobs
And Tata will build its new £4billion electric car battery plant in Somerset, not Spain, creating 4,000 jobs – a huge vote of confidence in post-Brexit Britain.
The Tories still have a mountain to climb to win the election. But these positive steps can be the start of a successful journey.
Abhorrent eco-zealots
In a rant as deranged as it was distasteful, Just Stop Oil likens the actions of fossil fuel firms to the Nazis who murdered Jewish people on an industrial scale. With such abhorrent hyperbole, these fanatics repel the public they’re trying to win over.
Meanwhile in London, a frustrated motorist trying to drive a pregnant woman to hospital punched a climate change protester who was blocking the road.
The Mail deplores violence, but this was entirely predictable. Politicians and police have been so spectacularly useless at preventing disruption to people’s lives, what did they think would happen?
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