Debanking - Farage Lying Again

It was the stand-out story of the silly season: former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage was to have his account with exclusive private bank Coutts closed. This was because, once he had repaid an outstanding loan, he would no longer meet the criteria for having an account there. But he was offered an ordinary NatWest account.

Nige was incandescent. Didn’t they know who he was? Well, yes they did, and Coutts also considered the reputational risk of having a racist bigot and congenital liar on the books. Ultimately, all turned out well for him: he got to keep his Coutts account, had a couple of NatWest bosses resign, and kept his undeserved high profile. So he kept appearing on the airwaves.

His latest crusade was all about Debanking. Especially all those who were having their accounts closed because of their political views, something he had largely made up. To this end, the Financial Conduct Authority would launch an investigation into the 12-month period to last June. Jeremy Hunt (the former Culture Secretary) told the FCA to get a move on and report.

And now report they have. As Sky News has told us, “The watchdog brought forward the publication of its findings, covering practices at 34 lenders, after an apparent leak to the Financial Times”. Do go on. “The FCA said the evidence it had gathered ‘suggests that no firm closed an account between July 2022 and June 2023 primarily because of a customer's political views’”.

But, they conceded, there was more work to do: “It added that it planned to work further with banks, building societies and payment companies to verify the data they supplied and better understand why and when they close accounts due to reputational risk”. These findings, though, were not in accordance with the requirements of Mr Thirsty. So he kicked off.

“The FCA says it finds no evidence of politicians being 'de-banked' over political views. This new report is a whitewash and a joke … If we don't have a regulator that is fit for purpose, what hope is there for our banking industry?” So let’s pick apart his torrent of invective, false assumptions, logic leaps, opinion passed off as fact, and general dishonesty.

“Whitewash and joke” is his opinion, based on no evidence at all. Equally, he provides nothing to back up his inference that the FCA is not “fit for purpose”. That claim appears to depend wholly on his “whitewash and joke” opinion being recast as fact. The major take-away from this latest Farage outburst is that any assertion he makes needs backing up with a reliable second source.

Meanwhile, the BBC has added that “The watchdog's investigation looked at data from 34 banks and payment companies covering the period from June 2022 to June 2023. It said it had reviewed a number of cases where political views or other opinions were cited as a cause for closing an account”.

HOWEVER, “But in none of the cases was this the main reason, with customer behaviour, such as the use of ‘racist language directed towards staff’, most often to blame”. Nige wasn’t having any of that, either. “Mr Farage called the findings ‘absolutely farcical … To suggest no one gets debanked for their political views is total nonsense,’ he said, adding that there were ‘dozens’ of examples of where this had happened”. He knows what to do.

And that is to pony up the details of all those dozens, so that the FCA can check them out. After all, he wouldn’t have a problem with that, unless for some reason he was exaggerating, misinterpreting information, or just lying. So we can see how truthful his claim “I can only conclude that they're part of the problem, rather than part of the solution” really is, or maybe not.

Farage has declined to take any responsibility for the slow-motion national economic car crash that has followed Brexit. No doubt he will decline to take responsibility for hostility to banking institutions following his smearing of them. So once again the question has to be asked: why does the media class keep on awarding him a credibility that he does not deserve?

He said Debanking was a thing. He lied. I’ll just leave that one there.

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