| The timeline When this story initially surfaced there was a lot of partial and conflicting information flying around. This is how it happened: At the end of June, Nigel Farage said he had been ousted from a bank – at the time he did not name which bank but it was later identified as Coutts. He added that he had tried to open accounts at nine other banks but had been denied on the basis that he was a politically exposed person. Given his storied career railing against the establishment, Farage knew exactly how to push this story. He uploaded a six-minute-long video on Twitter alongside a caption that read: “The establishment are trying to force me out of the UK by closing my bank accounts.” Kalyeena explains: “This is an issue that has been brought up for quite some time by a number of MPs, so it wasn’t hard for him to start getting political traction. Hence, you get the government instructing the regulator to accelerate their review.” And while Farage was offered an alternative bank account with NatWest’s high street arm, the timing of the offer was called into question. Farage said NatWest only came to him after he threatened to go public, and the offer was not clear to have included business banking services. And then there was the fateful BBC report that would lead to Alison Rose’s resignation. It cited sources who said that the decision to close Farage’s account was a commercial one because he had fallen below the threshold that requires clients to have £1m in investments or borrowing or £3m in savings, and that it had nothing to do with his political views. At this point, it became clear that the bank in question was Coutts. Farage then reverse Uno’d the situation by publishing a 40-page document that he had obtained via a subject access request. The document contained all the evidence Coutts gathered about him to give to its wealth reputational risk committee. The conflicting information bumped up the story to front page news. Many things were listed in the document, including his financial viability to bank with Coutts, but it did also suggest that Farage posed a reputational concern because of what was perceived as “racist, chauvinistic and xenophobic” views. “It’s important to note that while Farage is a very contested figure, at no point has he been charged with illegal hate speech, for example. He stayed on the legal side of that,” Kalyeena says. The government responded swiftly to Farage’s accusations, announcing a series of new laws that could be drawn up to stop banks closing customers’ accounts on the basis of political views. Farage also criticised NatWest’s chief executive for allegedly breaching client confidentiality, after it emerged she sat next to a BBC reporter the night before the story regarding his financial thresholds emerged. Farage was seemingly vindicated. NatWest bosses sent him in an apology in a letter, as did the BBC, and senior government officials, including the prime minister, rallied around him vowing to push through and strengthen legislation to provide more transparency around bank account closures. As the political pressure mounted, the bank’s chief executive fell on her sword and resigned, just eight hours after she had admitted to being the source of the BBC’s story and the board pledged its full confidence in her. Were any laws broken? On the one hand, all UK businesses, including banks, have the discretion to decide who to serve as customers. That is considered a commercial decision. The Financial Times has reported that under the guise of “de-risking”, banks have been dropping customers who pose a reputational risk for at least a decade. On the other, all large banks are required to provide basic, fee-free banking services to everyone – though this is not what Farage was looking for. Businesses cannot discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics such as sex or ethnicity, and that also includes political beliefs. “Some people might find it a bit ironic, given Nigel Farage’s position on the EU, that we have inherited EU laws that specifically say you must provide banking services to any individual and you cannot discriminate on the basis of protected identities as well as political beliefs,” Kalyeena says. “And so this is where the debate started, because how do you start parsing this out? What counts as a political belief? And what starts to look like a reputational risk to a business? I don’t think those boundaries were incredibly clear.” Why it matters It might be hard to get invested in a story that is effectively about a wealthy person who has been told that he cannot have a swanky, executive bank account but there are important ramifications here. A CEO of a massive bank resigning this quickly is incredibly rare. Kalyeena says that she has not seen a story pan out like this during her entire career covering banking: “Keep in mind that this is a bank that was bailed out during the 2008 financial crisis and is still 38.6% owned by the taxpayer, meaning that the government is the largest shareholder of the group. There have been suggestions that perhaps that if this was a different bank like Lloyds or Barclays, it wouldn’t be as easy to put political pressure on them. Now that is completely hypothetical, but some people have been drawing parallels.” What could happen next? Other banks have insisted that they have robust, sound rules to ensure things like this do not happen. However, there is little doubt that many of them are scrambling to make sure that nothing has fallen through the cracks. While banks are under obligation to gather information about their customers, to ensure they are making accurate risk assessments,“it may transpire that a number of public political figures are starting to file their own subject access requests and accessing files that were never meant for public consumption, but that may reveal quite embarrassing things about what the banks have gathered about them,” Kalyeena says. In terms of this saga, the story is likely to rumble on. Farage is pleased with the apologies and the resignation of NatWest’s chief executive, however he is continuing to call for more heads to roll – specifically the rest of the board. NatWest’s chairman, Howard Davies, was already on his way out, but this may accelerate his exit: “That raises questions as to whether you want a systemically important bank in the UK to be without any sort of continued leadership,” Kalyeena adds. And it is important to contextualise Farage’s complaints. He was offered alternative banking so his claims about being “de-banked” need to be treated with caution; there seems to have been no possibility he would have been left entirely without a bank account. And when he complained, Farage was given a meeting in front of the City minister to air his grievances and the government has been bending over backwards to change laws because of his complaints. Many people have their accounts closed with no explanation – others have difficulty opening one in the first place because of their housing or migration situation. “It is very interesting to see the sway that he continues to have within the government,” Kalyeena says. While this story has unfolded quickly, untangling this complicated web will not happen overnight. Assuming that NatWest continues its independent review, information will continue to come out, and Kalyeena points out that there has not been a regulatory decision on this yet, nor has there been a chance for an independent body to review the issue in full. Keep an eye out on the Guardian’s business section for the latest updates on this story. | 