Don't underestimate me. We are going to fight and get justice for all, says Nigel Farage
GB News
'Don't say I didn't warn you'
I have to begin tonight by talking about the NatWest Coutts saga.
As we know, Allison Rose, Dame Allison Rose stood down yesterday and this morning we got the announcement that the Chief Executive Officer of Coutts Bank, one Mr Peter Flavel, had resigned as well. Another senior bank director? Gone.
But don't say, don't say I didn't warn you. After my account was closed down without any reason given, I contacted Flavel as the boss to say what the hell is going on. I've been with this banking group for 43 years. I've never caused you any problems.
He didn't even have the courtesy to give me a reply. He just got a senior staff member to ring me. A few weeks later in early May, I sent him this e-mail and I said thank you for getting Camilla Stowell to contact me, etc.
I said at the moment I can't find any bank accounts and therefore on the day that you closed me out, I will turn up at the bank with a security van and collect the money in cash from you.
I look forward to meeting you. Now, if that wasn't a warning, then unless we sorted something sensible out, I was going to get public. And yet you know what? He chose to ignore me.
Whether he underestimated me, whether frankly he said rich and arrogant, he simply couldn't care less. I don't know. But it strikes me as being right that he has gone. He's treated me as a customer with total and utter contempt.
I wonder how many others are in the same category. Tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM we will get the NatWest half yearly figures. The banks, you know the ones, the taxpayer, bailed out when they were in trouble because of their greed and stupidity.
The banks last year made £35 billion in profits. They're on course to make even more profit this year, so no doubt we'll see some good figures for NatWest. But then at 9.30, Sir Howard Davis, the chairman of the NatWest Group, will have to face investors.
I would reckon there'll be a number of investors not very happy with his performance, not very happy with that astonishing statement that we saw on Tuesday where they said, yeah, you know what, Alison Rose has broken the most basic principle of banking, but we stand behind her decision only to reconvene another board meeting six hours later and to get rid of her.
His job is to ensure the good governance of the bank. I'd be very surprised if he survives tomorrow.
But this is broadening out way beyond Coutts and NatWest because today Barclays Bank put out their figures and they had an investor call and every single question that was faced with the directors was about debanking and the banking scandal that I'm involved in.
This industry is starting to run scared. And you know what? So it should. Rather than just being banks, this illness, this disease has swept through corporate Britain, woke corporatism. Suddenly they're all about values.
They're all about showing the world what lovely people they are. They're all about telling everybody how inclusive they are. Provided of course you agree with them. If you don't agree with them, you are excluded. You are abused. You are excommunicated.
Press in the last few days is waking up to this. Banking should be about banking not becoming the moral arbiters for everybody else, but in their haste to get rid of people, but in their desire to close cash out of the system.
They have gone around this country and closed down the accounts of tens of thousands of innocent people. None of the big time international drug money launderers get caught, but men and women all around this country have been horribly and unfairly treated.
And I would say this to the banking industry and to the regulator. Don't underestimate me. I mean this. We are going to fight and get justice for all of these wrong people.
I'm going to launch that website in a couple of days time and I'll ask anybody whose bank account has been suspended, whose bank account has been closed to get in touch with me and we're going to form a very, very powerful lobby group.
We're going to get the rules on banking changed. We're going to get the politics out of banks and building societies. Don't underestimate me. Just watch me over the course of the next few months.