Coutts gave Nigel Farage the boot as a customer because their reputation risk committee didn’t approve of his political views. But the decision has backfired spectacularly and has sparked one of the biggest crises in the bank’s 330-year history. The row shows no sign of dying down: last night, Nigel Farage appeared on BBC Newsnight to accuse the bank of behaving like a ‘political campaigning organisation’. He said:
‘Read the report, read the conclusions. They say Russia is a risk for them. They say my views do not align with the bank’s. How on earth a bank that is 40 per cent owned by the British taxpayer after their greedy incompetence led to us bailing them out I do not know. This bank are behaving now like a political campaigning organisation.’
Coutts said decisions to close an account ‘are not taken lightly’. But in Farage’s case, the bank certainly appears to have failed to do its homework.
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