I posted this on Twitter this morning:
The question is serious, and gets to the core of the Farage canpaign.
The object of Farage, Sunak, The Mail and others lining up to criticise NatWest is to drive ethics out of life. They want people to have the right to do whatever they want with impunity by forcing others to accept their actions without the right to impose sanctions on them.
But why shouldn't unethical conduct be capable of being sanctioned?
Discuss, as the classic exam questions always supposedly said.
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The short answer is that unethical behaviour dominates public life at the moment. Maybe because we are living in the age of ‘hyper-individualisation’ so that the individual – and what they believe – is sovereign?
But the deeper cause I think is the desire to win at all costs and also to vanquish dissent. Winning/gaining at all costs throws ethics out of the window. And whether bankers or politicians, winning is all that matters especially when you know that the philosophy and economic theories you are using are basically lies (trickle down, no such thing as government money, the efficient market hypothesis etc). The longer the lie goes on, the more ethics are abandoned to keep it alive.
Which reminds me that I saw something totally unethical last night on C4 news.
At the inquest I believe into the contaminated blood scandal (where people like Haemophiliacs were given infected blood from America) Jeremy Hunt basically extended the ‘there is no money trope’ and hinted that there would not be enough money to compensate the innocents.
I haven’t shouted at the TV for some time but I was outraged and wanted to go down to London and confront the tosser that he is personally on one of his morning jogs. Mind you, I’d worry if I could keep my hands off him.
Jeremy Hunt is a villain in my book. I could say a lot worse but it would be unprintable.
You’d expect private banks and bankers to be unethical (think 2008) but there is a strong corrosive unethical streak in our politics too as they sustain the lies that will bring us all down in the end.
Hunt is my MP and behind that apparently smooth exterior lurks a politician as right wing as any of them. I engage with him every few months. A couple of examples:
As MP he went to join the protesters against drilling for oil near the North Downs. A wonderful combination of environmental campaigners and Tory nimbies – I’m not sure they had much else in common. Protecting his local vote… As chancellor he supports a government signing off new oilfields and coal mines and blocking on shore wind – generally dismissing climate change.
He Co-authored a paper arguing for NHS privatisation. Then as Health minister he starved the NHS, ignored the need for pandemic preparations and is primarily responsible for the excess death rates (and all the rest) that we suffer today. Then as chair of the Health committee he pretends to be Mr nice guy, suggesting we should have named GPs and be able to get appointments quickly, even writing a book on the topic. Back as chancellor he reverts to type, claiming we can’t afford the health system we need – and used to have.
At least the likes of Mogg, Dorries and Co are consistent about what they are. Hunt is profoundly shifty and disingenuous, and all the more dangerous for that.
Two-faced Jeremy Hunt typifies the vermin Nye Bevan talked about. He would know as Health minister spear-heading the introduction of the NHS which encountered great opposition from the Tories. He must be restless in his grave at the attacks Hunt is making on the NHS! Meanwhile moronic voters keep voting for the vermin. What an insane country with far too many arrogant know-nothings including Starmer and his right-wing shadow cabinet!
The RW trope of “the woke left want to police your thoughts and actions” is of course the ultimate reverse-ferret, to disguise the fact that the hard right simply want to make everyone follow their own mantras instead.
You might argue that the reverse is also true.
I feel the deeper problem is that we’re losing the ability in public discourse to have a civil debate, rather than a slanging match.
Political opinion is not a protected characteristic in English law. Which means that no one is obliged to do business with people whose political views they find objectionable.
Like you I am no fan of Farage.
But as we have seen in the past large numbers of individuals and organisations have been ‘debanked’ including Mosques, MP’s supporters of Palestine and UK residents without UK Citizenship for no good reason.
Even my local Model Railway Society had great difficulty getting a new bank account.
There is also the issue of Gina Millers True and Fair party having its account closed down.
Given that it is very difficult to live and almost impossible to trade without some sort of banking facilities I suggest that there needs to be some sort of right to a minimum level of banking services – not including credit for both individuals and organisations, in the same way that there is a right to be connected to a gas or electricity supply.
To paraphrase that well known saying, I oppose what you stand for but I will support your right to a bank account
So. We need a state bank….
Mr Boxall, you offer a persuasive argument, rooted in practicalities. I approve of a State bank but my problem remains. The state bank may also deny people banking. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. It is for the law to determine whether apparently unacceptable behaviour deserves punishment of that severity; not banks. Banks possess a special, and increasing capacity and power to make life very difficult to live in the digital age. If it not now, very soon.
Maybe it’s time to treat banks as utilities, they are now pretty much as essential to living as energy, water & communications. In which case there would be a legal service obligation, and a regulator (I guess the FCA would cover it).
The FCA can’t cover anything
Thank you.
In 1973 I chose Co-op Bank for my first grant payment for college, because it did NOT require a credit of £100 , as did other bank/s; it did not attempt to bribe me with ‘free’ files & stationery; it imposed bank charge only if my a/c was £0.01 overdrawn; it was not a big player in apartheid South Africa.
We are moving to a digital banking world. Digital banking means everything you do is capable of being observed, controlled or simply purloined. The freedom to sanction in banking can deprive people of banking, and in a digital world that means deprive anyone of money. It gives banks or government greater control over people’s lives than ever before. The only free money is notes and coin. Notes and coin are are not easily controlled once in circulation, and create problems banks and governments do not like. For all the problems free circulation of money creates, it is also probably the greatest underrated, too easily dismissed protection of individual freedom in a world where freedom is under threat constantly. Enlightenment thinkers. Like Adam Smith grasped this, in the sense that he saw liberty as better served by economic freedom than politics would offer in his lifetime. Giving commercial banks universal power to sanction purely on subjective ethical grounds is lethal (who is the final arbiter?). I have insufficient confidence we can ever remove the risk of bad actors from banking, or Government: any Government. Who decides who the bad actors are?
Imagine there was a supposed ethical bus or train company, which denied board to passengers they didn’t like.
Maybe a private university which denied entry to the children of parents they didn’t like.
Or a media outlet which ignored people they didn’t like or who were just plain annoying.
These could work but only if the businesses paid a price in lost custom.
The key issue in the Farage case is the breach of customer confidentiality, and the view from at least half the board of his bank that it was ok to break GDPR laws because they don’t like the guy.
I ran an accounting practice that would not work for people who did not like paying tax
Farage himself published the stuff about the bank not liking him, after obtaining it by a subject access request. GDPR not relevant. The bank’s only breach was to reveal in, I think, a TV interview that they have minimum deposit requirements. This implied (though they didn’t say) that Farage didn’t meet these, which meant they’d unintentionally revealed personal information of his finances.
Frances Coppola who really understands how banks work, has studied the documentation around Farage in detail. Her conclusion rather challenges Farage’s version and the prevailing story that Farage has managed to put about.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coppolacomment/p/i-told-the-truth-and-i-will-not-apologise?r=qshi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
NatWest were wrong to reveal anything about Farage’s accounts but they were within their rights to disqualify him from being entitled to a Coutts account, with its minimum wealth requirements. What is more irritating is that there are thousands of people who cannot get bank accounts – the ‘unbanked’ – even though they need them just to live. There are thousands of SMEs who struggle to survive let alone grow because the banking system fails to provide them with the funding they need. And last but not least, we have a banking system that has repeatedly caused massive financial crises, and has been fined billions for its repeated misbehaviour.
Throughout all of that, no senior managers or directors have been held accountable. The tantrums around Farage are totally out of proportion.
I agree with your conclusion
I have heard a rumour (and it is just a rumour), that the whole Farage farrago was allegedly, a put up job to devalue NatWest Shares after a friend of his had shorted them. Giving said friend a chance to make some money and the govt a chance to sell off NatWest shares at a loss to friendly people (donors). Allegedly.
Richard asks is there a future for ethical banking and I wondered whether ethical banking was an oxymoron. So I asked to Chat GTP, and this was the conclusion of the response:
“Ultimately, whether “ethical banking” is an oxymoron or not depends on the actions and practices of specific financial institutions. Consumers who prioritize ethical considerations in their banking choices should carefully research and evaluate the policies and practices of different banks to determine if they align with their own ethical values”.
When I decided a number of years ago to look for ethical banking, I moved to Triodos and Nationwide, when both were at the top of the Ethical Consumer’s list of ethical banks . However, I haven’t delved into their financial results, nor looked at their investment policies in detail to ascertain whether the directors operate ethical businesses to my liking.
There was a time when usury was forbidden by almost all religions, but as capitalism began to take hold and the sin of avarice gave way to positive self-interest, so the rise of banking with the extension of credit to individuals and businesses became the norm, it wasn’t long before the question of ethics disappeared almost entirely from the banking scene and avarice took hold in-extremis.
Perhaps ethical banking could only occur in communities if not-for-profit credit unions were able to extend their services to provide facilities for the movement of money in digital form within the banking system using debit cards and locally-regulated credit cards.
So, yes, there is a future for ethical banking, but how do we get there in the face of the abysmally short-sightedness of current politicians and the lack of critical thinking by the man on the omnibus…..?
My main bank now is Nationwide for being a mutual
But I did not approve of its latest distribution
Was this not the starting point for building societies as they were originally constituted? They were then allowed to transition into banks in order to “compete”, then merged and/or got taken over. It seems one of the problems of capitalism is that big businesses always progressively eat all the smaller fry.