Nigel Farage cries persecution, nobody wants to be his banker after ties to Russia

I think you have swallowed starmers narrative a bit to eagerly. There were long standing procedures to deal with antisemitism and it was starmers boys who were delaying most of the cases from been resolved to use as ammunition.

It would surely have been unthinkable ten years. Farage has never really disguised the fact that UKIP and the Brexit Party were far right parties in the same way as the Front Nationale in France and the AfD in Germany. What on earth Sunak and Braverman are doing getting involved in this grifter's private spat with a bank is anyone's guess.

What does he hope to achieve by all of this? By its very nature, Coutts aren't going to bow to public pressure and other private client banks won't go near him now. The man is a fool

Well, that's a bit of an oversimplification.

In the first place, the document makes it clear that the concern for the bank is not the beliefs themselves, but the public perception of Farage's beliefs. If Farage kept his beliefs to himself the bank would be unconcerned about them. Presumably many other Coutts customers hold odious beliefs of one kind or another; Coutts neither knows nor cares. It is the publicity that Farage has given his beliefs, and the reaction that has triggered, that worry the bank.

Secondly, the bank is not concerned with whether the public perception of Farage's beliefs is correct or fair. They express no opinion about this, one way or the other. All that the bank cares about is that the public perception is real. It's the reality of the public perception, irrespective of its accuracy or fairness, that threatens damage to the bank's reputation.

Thirdly, the public perception of Farage's beliefs are that they are racist, xenophobic, antisemitic, pro-Russian, anti-LGBT. You can characterise racism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc as "political beliefs" if you want. That doesn't validate, excuse or defend them, and it doesn't magically confer some kind of protection on them; "political beliefs" are not one of the protected grounds in the UK's equality legislation (except in NI). (Maybe they should be; that's a debate that might be worth having. It's not primarily a debate about banking, though.)

Finally, it should be noted that the bank's financial criteria for its customers are relevant here. There has been much discussion of the fact that you have to deposit at least £x or borrow at least £y before Coutts will accept you as a customer. The Coutts dossier makes it clear that Farage did qualify under these criteria because he had a mortgage with them of the required amount, but that mortgage was due for repayment in July 2023. From that point on, Farage would no longer qualify. The dossier was prepared because the bank was considering whether it wished to retain him as a customer after he ceased to qualify. (Presumably this question arises with many customers, and the bank has a process for addressing it.)

On edit:

It seems to me that if there's an issue here, it's not really about Farage's beliefs or his right to hold them; but about free speech. The bank isn't dumping Farage because he holds odious beliefs, but because he expresses them — publicly, repeatedly and controversially. That's what causes the bank a problem; that's what leads them to decline his further custom. So if this is something that engages political rights, it's a freedom of speech/freedom of expression matter.

The classic view of freedom of speech is that it's a principle that constrains the actions of the state. (With lots of exceptions which we needn't go into here) the law or the state can't restrain you from speaking or punish you for speaking. But another private citizen can respond to your speech by exercising their own freedom of speech to contradict you or criticise you, or exercise their own freedom of association by refusing to have anything to do with you. I may have the freedom to say objectionable things, but you have the freedom to throw me out of your house if I do. Or, relevantly, not to do business with me.

If Coutts was a state-owned bank there might be an issue here about whether an agency of the state was violating Farage's freedom of speech. But, obviously, that's not the case.

Or, if banking regulations operated to either require or encourage Coutts to refuse Farage's business on account of the views he expresses then, again, we'd be looking at state action. But, again, that's not the case.

Farage says that there's an "establishment conspiracy" to refuse him banking service in order to drive him out of the UK. That's an astonishingly stupid suggestion for several reasons that are too obvious to detail here. So why would he try to frame the matter in these terms? I think because he's trying to suggest an equation between "the establishment' and "the government" so as to suggest that his freedom of speech is being infringed by the state in a way that liberals would object to.

As described here and mentioned on Newsnight, he’s only worth their while until he’s paid off the mortgage. By deduction, does that then mean that Farage had failed to maintain the minimum 3m in savings, which is the other rule for having a Coutts account? Also based on the description of a bank that seems to essentially be a company of banking butlers who’ll do all your banking for you, and will even visit you, so I can understand why they might want to insist on financial minimums to make any of that worth their effort.

Really feels like poor old Nigel simply can’t stomach the idea of having a Premium NatWest account. An account where Banking Butlers likely don’t come to his house and describe all the financial shenanigans they’ve pulled off with his portfolio, but instead he probably have to log into an online bank to manage his accounts himself, just like the rest of us (and likely just like a lot of people who were *successfully* elected as MPs).

Man of the People indeed. Him throwing out “but the banks are woke!” at the end of that Newsnight bit just smacked as pathetic.

A bit surprised to see some posters defending a bank's decision to deny certain services to a potential customer based on public perceptions of that customer and their potential impact on business.

I'd imagine that if, say, Bernie Sanders were being treated in the same way as a certain bank wanted nothing to do with 'socialism' or 'woke' or whatever, I'd expect things to be different. Well actually, I'd expect the arguments to be much the same, but the posters making them to be different.

Farage is scum, and it's there's definitely a part of me that enjoys his piteous bleating about this, but it still doesn't sound right, and there does seem to be a sense that people are defending some pretty dodgy principles on the part of the the bank, just because it's Farage.

The issue is, he longer qualifies for the services he expects. They have offered him an alternative and he isn't happy with that. Also, it's not his views per se, but that fact he is so public about them. Coutts don't want to be in the press for any reason, but if they capitulate to him, they risk losing far more lucrative customers

My point is that if some bank did remove services from Sanders because they didn't want reputational damage from associating with woke socialists, I don't think we'd have the same posters on here arguing that it's just a business decision, bank needs to protect their reputation, no laws broken, end of story really.

What Coutts appear to have done sounds dodgy to me, and it doesn't stop being dodgy just because they did it to somebody I don't like.