A Bullying Pulpit for the Debanked Nigel Farage, Crypto for Everyone Else
Nigel Farage, the lizard-skinned British politician who pushed Brexit, is a totem for crypto, whether he knows it or not.
So forget your pride and any misgivings, because what recently happened with Farage in the UK is a warning to us all.
(Not to mention the apparent blockade of crypto banking in the US, which is a problem of its own.)
So Farage’s story isn’t entirely new – although it’s different in some ways than most the wealthy Tory had a pulpit to stand on.
This is of course abhorrent and has rightfully caused some black eyes in the media and at the bank after an apparent cover-up was uncovered. When the news first broke, Farage was essentially portrayed as a conspirator claiming he was going to be “cancelled”. The bank lied and claimed they closed his account because his balance fell below the PS1 million minimum (about $1.3 million).
But after a retraction from the BBC, an apology from NatWest CEO Alison Rose, and now her resignation, it’s safe to say that politics was absolutely paramount in Coutts’ decision to ditch Farage as a client.
Rose’s fate was essentially sealed last week when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unexpectedly sided with Farage, saying: “It is not right for someone to be denied financial services for exercising their legal right to freedom of expression.”(* ) And it’s true, you might loathe former MEP-turned-‘Eurosceptic’ Farage. But the guy has a right to a bank account just like he has a right to his views.
But does he? It is obvious to anyone who believes that basic human rights exist that Rose and Coutts got it wrong about Farage (who, incidentally, is also a public proponent of Bitcoin). But in many ways, Rose’s only real crime was lying to the public, to the government and to the bank’s investors, and if that hadn’t happened — and she went straight to the conclusion that Coutts is cutting ties with Farage because he’s unscrupulous – how many would people be willing to say she made the right decision?
Let’s remember that this story has another political significance. The 53-year-old banker, said to be the first woman to head a major British bank, appeared to have been an advocate of “purpose-driven” corporate governance working to extricate the once-important oil and gas lender from those entanglements. In short, she was awake (at least in the minds of some of Farage’s most staunch supporters).
To the extent that one can call a bank CEO radical, Rose was a symbol of societal progress on one side of the political divide and of all the forces working to suppress Farage’s brand of British nationalism on the other . What seems like a simple matter – should Farage speak up and come to the bank – is only simple in hindsight after a bigger crime has been uncovered.
For example, if the shoe were on the other foot, would Farage’s supporters hypothetically advocate for someone like leftist Jeremy Corbyn to keep his bank account? It’s all speculation, but right-wing platforms like Parler and “anti-woke” bank GlorFi (now defunct) weren’t exactly bastions of free speech. And how many people were willing to defend Kanye when he suffered an anti-Semitic onslaught that cost him his money manager and his Chase account?
To some extent, some of the only consistent advocates for the right to bank are those in the crypto space — who know what it’s like to be unbanked. My colleague David Z. Morris called this group the “financial ACLU” (I think he’s referring to the days when the famous civil rights organization was more consistently supportive of free speech). It’s ironic, too, because crypto has its own solutions to banking challenges: politics, passions, and people need to be taken out of the equation.
