In praise of Nigel Farage’s war on banks

Why did it take Nigel Farage to suggest clawing back some of the super profits pocketed recently by British banks? Why hasn’t Labour thought of stopping the Bank of England paying interest on the deposits of commercial banks?

There is, after all, plenty of money for the taking. In 2023, HSBC reported a record net profit of over $30 billion (£24 billion). Lloyds made around £5.5 billion and Barclays trousered £6 billion. The UK banks have never had it so good.

They have been coining it because of high interest rates which acts like a reverse ATM machine. The Reform election manifesto, sorry ‘contract’, proposes accessing some of this by getting the Bank of England to stop paying interest on the £700 billion in deposits of commercial banks held under quantitative easing. This is not some naive Marxist idea cooked up by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. It is a reform that has been discussed for years in financial and academic