I have finally stopped wincing at the car crash that is Coutts’ Nigel Farage climbdown

I have finally stopped wincing at the car crash that is Coutts’ Nigel Farage climbdown to think about the miscalculations that drove this disaster.

Although he was in some ways a commercial risk, it’s clear that distaste for Farage’s political views was the chief reason for Coutts’s attempts to shut down his account.

Many factors massively counteracted any cheap points Coutts may have hoped to score from this move:

Firstly, Coutts appears to have broken its own rules, which has prompted the FCA and the government to weigh in on the matter – both of which are considerably more damaging to the bank than any customer who might upset their notion of corporate progressiveness.

Secondly, citing Farage’s failure to meet their financial threshold as justification was exposed as misleading – which in itself is bad enough for Coutts’ reputation. Still, it also allows the inference that, were Farage more salubrious, this might have sugared the pill of his political views.

Coutts’ reasoning gives the impression that Farage wasn’t deemed a ‘risk’ because he was a customer but because the public knew (since 2019) that he was a customer and therefore that the decision was more about optics than principles.

These factors forced Coutts’ CEO into a grovelling reverse-ferret and the bank now has a monumental communications task if it is to find a way forward. Apologising and retracting is Coutts’ only course of action where Farage is concerned, but there’s more firefighting to do.

Coutts now needs to prove that it can meet its professional standards, act with integrity and back up its corporate values with authenticity – all while attempting to resurrect its brand of dignified discretion. It’s a far more exacting challenge than Farage’s political views could ever have created for them, and entirely self-inflicted.