Dame Alison Rose should not have resigned as head of NatWest over the Nigel Farage affair – and ministers who forced this by flinching in the face of a silly media storm should be ashamed of themselves.
In the great Coutts debate this columnist finds himself in a minority. I express no opinion on the wisdom or otherwise of the private bank’s decision to drop Farage as a client, believing this to be a private matter between himself and Coutts.
I’ll pose a number of questions, but first there’s something we must get out of the way. Whether or not Coutts was wise to exclude Farage, a bank like this has, as the law stands, a right to discriminate in its choice of customers.
Customer-facing businesses do often, and should, enjoy a right to reserve admission to premises or membership. No publican could survive long without that implicit right. One of the charming ironies in which our era abounds is that the very people who (as a type) would wax indignant in support of the Garrick Club’s denial of full membership to women, or the Athenaeum’s insistence upon male members wearing a tie at dinner, find themselves on the other side of the argument when a private, members-only institution excludes a would-be customer because his publicly expressed opinion, rather than his gender or neckwear, offends them.
Aren’t there causes that, though lawful, you or I or a respectable bank might consider wicked?
So, point one: a private bank enjoys the legal right to choose its customers.
