Nigel Farage blasts ‘detached’ Emily Maitlis as ex-BBC presenter wades in on debanking row

Farage obtained documents showing that Coutts opted to close his accounts after deciding that his views “do not align” with their “values”.

The former BBC Newsnight anchor told The News Agents podcast that she felt Farage was attempting to “whip up a populist storm” with his efforts to bring a light to the issue.

Speaking on GB News, Farage strongly refuted the suggestion, arguing that Maitlis is going against the grain with her argument.

“It’s very hard to be anybody more detached from real life than Emily Maitlis”, he told Dan Wootton.

“The truth is, the typical email I get today from real people is, ‘I don’t often agree with you on policy issues but this is a really important and fundamental question of free speech and democratic questions’.

“This reaches out. But of course, you’re going to have some in the media who want to prosecute their career by being against me and appealing to hate and prejudice.

“People on my wavelength can see this really matters.”

Alison Rose, the former NatWest chief executive, was forced to step down last month after admitting to telling BBC business editor Simon Jack that Farage had been debanked as he had not reached the financial threshold.

The BBC and Simon Jack have both apologised to Farage over the story, with the emergence of further details confirming that the bank had instead decided to part ways with Farage as a result of his political beliefs.

Peter Flavel, the chief executive of Coutts, resigned on Thursday last week over the scandal, two days after Dame Alison stepped down as the chief executive of NatWest, which owns Coutts.

Maitlis said: “If you put to one side the leaking of customer confidentiality, which I probably think we all agree is egregious, I think the one thing we have learnt from all of this is how to whip up a populist storm.

“Because at the heart of this is the choice of one private bank to say no to one private customer who they felt was costing them too much and wasn’t bringing them in enough money. They offered him another high street bank, like 95 per cent of the population use, and that wasn’t good enough.”

Others have rallied against Maitlis’ argument, including GB News presenter and Conservative MP Lee Anderson, who told The Telegraph: “These comments reek of victim blaming.

“Emily should have the sense to realise that no one should be barred from a bank because of their political views.”

Farage has been offered his bank account bank by Coutts, but the former UKIP leader is hoping for talks with the bank before he commits to anything.

He told Dan Wootton: “I want to sit down face to face and find out how this happened, why this happened. I want you to accept you've broken the law.

“I want you to accept that you've taken up an inordinate amount of my time. You've cost me a great deal of money in legal fees already, which which I've used all the way through to make sure that I was dotting the i's and crossing the t's.

“But more important than all of that, I want to know how many other people had accounts closed at NatWest and Coutts because of their opinions?

“What can we do to make sure that nothing like this ever happens to anybody else in your banking group again?”