The Nigel Farage and Coutts saga highlights something significant about our culture. My friend Steve Kneale also wrote about the saga here and he takes a much stronger line that Coutts were morally wrong to close Farage’s account and were discriminating against him.
My position would be that, yes they were discriminating against him but discriminating and choosing is not in itself immoral or necessarily illegal. It both is immoral and therefore rightly illegal to discriminate against someone based on who they are, where there shouldn’t be such discrimination.
I should not discriminate against someone because of their race, gender or class. That’s because it is morally repugnant for me to be prejudiced against people, especially on those things that God tells me not to judge on. And the law rightly captures that.
However, we all discriminate on a whole load of things, all the time and for different things. Sometimes we would do one thing with a person but not another. For example, suppose I have a friend who is passionate in their support for Leeds United. I might do all kinds of things with them but would I invite them round to watch Bradford City v Aston Villa on the TV? Probably not because I and my other guests might find them difficult to put up with as they took Villas’ side out of spite. Similarly, I might choose not to invite someone with strident political views to a party if I was concerned that they would dominate and cause controversy. In both cases I’ve discriminated but I doubt it would be seen as immoral.
The point of course is that not only is there nothing wrong with such discrimination but it is also reasoned, not irrational prejudice.
Now, the question for Coutts is whether their discrimination against Nigel Farage is irrational or comes with good reason. If all that Coutts do is provide somewhere for Nigel to deposit his money, or even if they are trying to make a bit of money for him then probably they are. I don’t think anyone would bat an eyelid if they discovered that Nigel banked at Barclays. I doubt anyone is about to start demanding that Nat West tell us if Boris Johnson has an account with them. I’m not planning a picket line outside whichever bank Jeremy Corbyn is with.
But as I mentioned in my earlier article. I think that if you bank with Coutts then, you are not just asking them to look after your money. No, you are buying into something else. You are buying into Coutts reputation. You don’t just go to them for inflation busting returns, you go to them because you expect their reputation to rub off on you. A Coutts account tells the world that you’ve made it, you are successful, you are in. I must admit that I’m surprised that Nigel really wants that kind of reputation. In fact it suits him better to be the outsider, rejected by Coutts -so long as it’s not because he doesn’t have enough money because although he wants to be a man of the people, he still wants to be a successful one.
Incidentally, if the bank had up front said that their concerns were with how Farage’s conduct (not just his opinions) had affected the bank’s reputation and therefore their commercial viability then I suspect that they would have had a viable defence in any legal proceedings, though they may still have lost a case. I think given the conflicting reasons provided and lack of transparency then defending them will be a bit harder for their lawyers .*
Now, here’s the thing. In so far as that what you buy into with a prestigious bank is the whole prestige package, it’s worth observing that our whole culture has gone that way. Advertising and marketing makes it clear that I am not just getting a product or service in return for my well earned cash. The adverts sell me a life style, an image, a reputation. They sell me relationships and status.
Therein lies the greater challenge for you and me as Christians and perhaps that, rather than the fear that we are all going to get excluded from our banks if we don’t have 666 tattoos is what Revelation is getting at when it warns about the Mark of the Beast. Marketing and advertising invites us into a world of identity and status idolatry. It is costly to opt out of that.
* A couple of notes around some areas of confusion here. 1. Whilst some have focused on NatWest owning Coutts to suggest it is just a normal bank, it is important to be clear that this doesn’t make it a branch of NatWest. It is not like when HSBC took over Midland Bank. Coutts is a separate entity. It would be interesting to see if NatWest are refusing business with Farage.
2. I think there is clear evidence that the decision was not in and of itself illegal. This is because the issue was not with identity or beliefs but perceived behaviours and associations. The result is that the Government have expressed moral outrage but demands for new laws suggest it wasn’t currently illegal.
Postscipt
In a further twist, today the CEO of Coutts’ owners, Nat West has apologised to Nigel Farage, started a review and suggested that the comments made about him were deeply inappropriate. It’s worth noting
- That it seems after all that we do as a society accept that there are constraints on freedom of speech. It is not always appropriate or acceptable for us to say what we think. There are consequences.
- That I suspect in the end that this matter finishes as it started with the bank doing what it thinks is best for its reputation and commercial viability. They may have thought that having Farage as a customer was bad for their business reputation and would put others off. I suspect that provoking potential changes to banking law and publicly trashing the reputation of a high profile customer is not exactly going to have gone down with other potential clients who presumably choose Coutts for that sense of old fashioned courtesy and discretion. Not only that but there will have been fear of cross-brand-contamination. Coutts’ management may have had concerns about their reputation based on the kind of customers they wanted to attract. However, the decision was affecting the reputation of their owners and it may not suit Nat West’s reputation to be hostile to someone seen as sticking up for the ordinary man in the street.
Faithroots 