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You might remember the protest by the Canadian truckers in 2022 – for a while in looked like they were winning. Then the beleaguered rainbow government of Mr. Peoplekind Justin Trudeau, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They unleashed a new Wunder-weapon: financial warfare.

The GoFundMe account set up for the support of the Canadian truckers was removed. The personal bank accounts of some the Canadian truckers were frozen, too. You do they math – how long would you be able to function without a bank account? This swiftly put an end to this viral and peaceful protest.

Someone in the UK banking scene appears to have ripped a page out of this playbook.
One day, Nigel Farage, Mr. Brexit himself, got mail from his bank, Coutts, arguably the UK’s most prestigious bank in the UK (His Majesty, the King, is a customer). In this letter Coutts told Farage that unfortunately his private and business accounts had to be closed.
Reasons? None were provided. Instead – Farage was offered an ordinary bank account with NatWest (Coutts is part of the large NatWest group), which would come without all the hand-tailored services needed by Farage as a politician, a media personality and stock trader in his own right. Nigel Farage reached out to 10 other banks. All refused his business. What had happened?

Who knows Nigel Farage understands that he is not the kind of guy who just accepts things the way they are. For 20 years or so he fought for his Brexit project, often ridiculed as an eccentric, fighting a Don-Quixote-like battle he could not win. However, in 2016, probably to his own surprise, the Brexit side won the referendum.

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He went public with his banking problem – as the leading anchor of the UK’s relatively new populist news station GB News (a British Fox News – before Fox had fired Tucker Carlson). Quickly thousands of his viewers turned to him - they had been de-banked as well. A related Facebook group was set up including roughly 10,000 individuals.

As public pressure on Coutts increased to explain Farage’s account closure, conveniently the state-owned British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), always eager to be the establishment’s wingman, reported that the issue had been that Mr. Farage simply did not have sufficient funds in his accounts. Gotcha, tee-hee! Nothing to do with politics – he was just too poor for Coutts, that’s why they had to close his accounts, nothing to see here.

Nigel Farage thought that this was improbable and launched a Subject Access Request to Coutts. Furthermore, Farage posed the question – “how does the BBC think it knows my account balance”?

The result of the Subject Access Request was revealing. As Mr. Farage had suspected – it was not insufficient funds that had gotten Coutts’s rainbow-coloured knickers in a twist. A bit like the East German secret service Stasi or Santa Claus himself Coutts had compiled a 40-page long dossier / naughty-list on Farage. The Telegraph newspaper published this document in full length.
And, yes, the problem was not at all insufficient funds on Nigel Farage’s bank account. Page after page the dossier expressed concerns about Farage’s “racist ad xenophobe” views, even though Nigel Farage is actually pro-immigration (using an Australian style merit based system). The document takes especial offence to the fact that Farage in August 2020 Nigel Farage considered the ongoing arrival of boat refugees from France as a “shocking invasion of the Kent coast” (ok, how else should call the mass arrival of uninvited military aged men? Should we now call William the Conqueror a refugee?).

The dossier further bitterly complains about the fact that Farage called Black Lives Matter a “radical left, Marxist organization” (ok, consult BLM’s website and see if you reach a different conclusion). At the end of this unstructured drivel the dossier concludes that Mr. Farage’s views are “at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation” – as if there was anything inclusive about Coutts financial criteria (i.e. maintaining at least GBP 1m in investment or borrowings (mortgage) or GBP 3m in savings).

The publication of this dossier was highly embarrassing and meant painful questions to Coutts and the BBC:

Had the BBC made mistake in its research / fact-checking?

Had someone at Coutts spoken to the BBC?

Had the contact person from Coutts lied to the BBC with regards to Nigel Farage’s continued financial eligibility?

It transpired that the CEO of the NatWest Group (that owns Coutts), Dame Alison Rose had sat next to a BBC employee during an event, one day before the “leak” about Nigel Farage’s “insufficient funds” broke…

Finally, Dame Alison Rose admitted her mistake and resigned (given the damage caused to the bank it should have been “fired for cause”, but since the 2008 financial crisis we know that CEOs are given a soft landing for blatant incompetence – she might get GBP 4m for resigning).
The Coutts CEO Peter Flavel resigned, too.

Coutts can further look forward to a hefty fine for violating UK privacy laws – Nigel Farage filed a formal complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. Whilst Nigel Farage is celebrating his total victory (he received apologies from Coutts and the BBC, he is getting his account back), he is not taking his foot of the gas – he insists on financial compensation, he insists that the whole board of directors of Coutts needs to go (as they surely had known of the activities against him as a so-called publicly exposed person – PEP).

Lessons learned – just as in the case of the successful campaign against Bud-Light – there is a lot to be learned for a successful “right wing” campaign:

A – Do not just stoically tolerate such de-banking or try to deal with it “discretely” away from public scrutiny
B – Do not make it too personal or solely a “right wing” cause– Farage’s mantra throughout the campaign has been “I am doing this not for me but all of you. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you”
C – Do not shy away from traditional left-wing-like rhetoric á la „WE are the advocate of the ordinary folks“
D – Once you seem to be successful, do not take your foot of the gas – keep pressing home the advantage: „They have issued an apology – great, now their CEO has to go, I want compensation and I want to launch a complaint with the competent privacy protection agency”

Will this victory mean rocket fuel for a potential candidacy for the next UK election next year? So far Farage has ruled this out unequivocally. Then again, one year is an eternity in the current political climate.

With all the due jubilation for Farage’s triumph over the weaponized financial sector – this case has uncovered the role of the data giant Refinitiv, which next to supplying the (questionable) data for a company’s ESG score, apparently also busies itself with the surveillance of bank costumers’ social media data. Was it because of this data that all other 10 banks refused doing business with Farage (as all of them used the same database)? We need to stay vigilant.

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