Former Bank of England economist Andy Haldane has claimed he was debanked like Nigel Farage after being refused an account because of his “political” connections (Bloomberg, Telegraph).
Mr Haldane said he was turned down by an unnamed lender last year, which told him the decision was “because you are politically connected by dint of working for the Bank of England”.
In a speech on Wednesday night at the Royal Society of Arts, where Mr Haldane is now chief executive, he said: “Three problems with that: one, I wasn’t working for the Bank of England [by that point]. Two, the Bank of England is by statute independent from government. Third, the Bank of England was their regulator, so the risk was to their regulator.”
Mr Haldane highlighted the story with a point on a slideshow saying “we are all Nigels now,” in reference to Mr Farage.
In 2023, the former head of the right-wing Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, revealed that his long-standing account with Coutts bank had been closed, after an internal risk committee determined that his views on Brexit, migration, LGBT rights and Net Zero “did not align” with the bank’s “values”.
Mr Farage is the most high-profile figure to have been debanked in recent years, but the FSU is aware of dozens of people and organisations this has happened to.
HSBC Hong Kong recently followed PayPal in closing the accounts of members of the League of Social Democrats, threatening the future of one of the few remaining pro-democracy parties that dares protest against China’s draconian security law and free speech crackdown in the Special Administrative Region territory.
Back in the UK, Barclays Bank was forced to pay over £20,000 compensation to the Christian organisation Core Issues Trust after it closed its accounts due to pressure from LGBTQ+ groups.
Last year, Henrik Overgaard Nielsen, a former MEP for the Brexit Party, was informed his account with MetroBank would be closed, while the Rev Richard Fothergill, a Church of England vicar and member of the FSU, was also told by the Yorkshire Building Society that it would be closing his account after he responded to a request for feedback to complain about the bank’s promotion of Pride and what he considered a morally suspect trans agenda.
Mr Haldane’s anecdote formed part of his argument that regulation had gone too far in the City and was now crushing growth by putting off any risk taking.
The Bank’s former chief economist said regulations with “the best of intentions” were “chilling risk appetite and forestalling investing”. He said many new rules introduced by the government and regulators were “penny wise but pound foolish”.
Debanking is in fact just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to withdrawing services from people on political grounds.
At the FSU, we often go to bat for people who’ve been kicked out of professional associations for wrongthink.
One recent case involved a man threatened with suspension from British Cycling for objecting to a racially segregated event.
Another FSU case concerns Newcastle United Football Club fan Linzi Smith, who has been banned from St James’s Park for the next two seasons because of gender-critical opinions she expressed on social media. We’re currently helping her appeal that decision, but we think hundreds – possibly thousands – of football fans have been blacklisted by the Premier League for expressing unfashionable but perfectly lawful views.
The fact is that discriminating against people because of their beliefs – provided they’re deemed “worthy of respect in a democratic society” – is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010. But one of the reasons services are being withdrawn from so many people whose views fall outside the Overton window is because equalities law is being misapplied, often at the behest of activist lobby groups like Stonewall.
Perhaps the most egregious example we’ve come across is that of Teresa Steele, a former solicitor who had her life-saving operation cancelled by a private hospital after she complained about a transgender nurse and asked for assurance that only biological women would be involved in her intimate care.
This is not the only recent example of critical care being denied to women with gender critical views.
A private medical hospital in the United States recently refused to treat a woman with breast cancer because of the “disrespectful and hurtful remarks” she made in a private email to her physician. What were the outrageous things she said? She objected to the presence of a trans pride flag in the clinic’s reception area.
In Canada, a woman was evicted from a domestic violence shelter for women after expressing concerns to management about gender identity ideology, following two separate incidents with transgender women in the residence. “The fact is you’re transphobic,” the manager told her during the eviction process, adding: “[T]his is not the right place for you.”
Closer to home, recent guidance from the NHS Confederation – published in partnership with the LGBT Foundation – warns that patients may be found guilty of direct discrimination or harassment if they refuse care from a transgender medical professional. (Which isn’t true.)
“If a patient or relative refuses to be treated or cared for by a healthcare worker due to the employee’s protected characteristic of gender reassignment, and this request has no reasonable clinical merit, this may be direct discrimination or harassment,” the 97-page guidance states, adding that patients who express “any such views… may be removed from the healthcare premises”. Remarkably, the document goes on to suggest that patients with dementia “should still be challenged” if they express discriminatory views about transgender staff.
