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

So the outrage is about the (inevitable) leak rather than the farage not having enough money for a Coutts account.

Next time it will just be an "anonymous source".

All of this was precipitated by Farage going public and the story being amplified by his numerous far right press pals.

It's a total non story that should have been relegated to Page 12 of the Daily Telegraph.

Is it? As far as I can tell he no longer met the business criteria of the bank. Coupled with his political standing the Bank took the decision to no longer deal with him.

With is different to the story he originally told. So Farage himself seems to have been involved in some inaccurate reporting.

And Alison Rose quits. She definitely gives a toss now.

If the Farage shutdown of his account was just a cost/benefit exercise on Nat West's part, why would she feel compelled to resign?

Because she (a) leaked about it to the press and (b) seems to have done so dishonestly.

The closure of the account is not the issue. She will never apologise, still less resign, for closing his account; the right of a bank to decide who it will do business with is a hill any banker will die on. But bankers trade on their reputation for discretion and honesty, and in the leak she squandered both.

The new rules in the UK will not prevent banks from doing what you outline here. They only require (a) that the bank give you 90 days notice of closure (up from 30 days under current rules) and (b) state the reasons for terminating your account. They don't change the reasons that banks are permitted to use (which are, basically, any reason that doesn't infringe the equal treatment legislation). So - subject to the paragraph below - a bank closing your account because it doesn't like your politics will continue to be perfectly lawful in the UK. Political opinion is not one of the protected characteristics in the equal treatment legislation in GB.

The right of people in the UK to access banking services is already protected by law — ironically, by an EU directive which is still in operation in the UK. All banks above a certain size are required by law to offer a "basic account" which is fee-free and which cannot be refused to any UK resident, except on grounds relating to money-laundering or the financing of terrorism. Coutts is not large enough to be within the scope of the basic account obligation, but NatWest is. Farage can have a basic account with NatWest if he wants, and indeed has already been offered one. If he doesn't want to bank with NatWest, which would be understandable, there are at least eight other banks in the UK that are obliged to offer basic accounts to any UK resident; he can bank with any of them.

There is a question of judgment or standards. Journalists who rely on anonymous and unattributable sources do have to make judgment calls about whether they will report what the sources say, given that the sources could be lying to them. Most media organisations have rules or protocols about this, which will look at questions like — How credible is the source? Does the source have any bias or interest that might lead them to be selective or dishonest in what they say to us? Can we get any corroboration from another source of what is being said to us? Etc, etc.

Here, the BBC published a story based on single (then) anonymous source. There was no corroboration from any other source, and the source they were relying on did have an interest in the matter. On the other hand, the source was someone with a professional reputation that depended on honesty, and so had much to lose by lying. And the sources was someone in a position to know the truth of the matter. So, weighing all those factors up, the BBC decided to run with the story. And now its embarrassed because the story was in fact false. This suggests either that the BBC's rules or protocols weren't followed, or that they could maybe stand to be a bit more robust, because an organisation like the BBC doesn't want to run stories that turn out to be false.

(It would be different if the CEO had been speaking on the record. Then the BBC would have no case to answer for reporting what she said, and attributing it to her.)

Her resigning will be dismissed as a PR exercise here, I presume.

That's not going to happen since, as already pointed out, you can't be debanked for your beliefs; no matter what your political beliefs you will always retain the right to have and operate a basic account. So, if anybody in the UK is saying that they were debanked for their beliefs, they are telling a naughty fib.

A basic account doesn't come with an overdraft facility or a chequebook, so it is lawful to deny these on the basis on the basis of the customer's beliefs. I remain to be convinced that this has happened on a large scale but, even if it turns out that it has, that's not a "can of worms", precisely it's completely lawful. And there is no proposal to change this; it will remain completely lawful.

Besides, the closure of bank accounts is not something to which Faragistes should want spend too much time denouncing as a monstrous injustice. Tens of thousands of Britons had basic bank accounts closed as a direct result of Brexit — no longer being residents of the EU, their banking rights were not protected by Directive 2014/92/EU. No longer being entitled to even a basic account in the EU, they were debanked. If Faragistes weren't fussed about that, it's very hard to take them seriously when they start hyperventilating about Farage no longer having his posh account with Coutts.

Who's dismissing it as a PR exercise?