What a happy day Wednesday, July 26 turned out to be.

The head of Natwest Group, Dame Alison Rose, resigned in the early hours of the morning:

Somewhere in The Telegraph it said (H/T to a Guido Fawkes reader, purple emphases mine):

Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor, said: 

As the first woman to take the top job at one of the big four UK banks back in 2019, this is a sad moment for female representation …

It certainly is. Women are no purer than men when they’re in a position of responsibility or prominence. For anyone doubting that, think Hillary Clinton.

I will go into Dame Alison’s resignation in more depth, but what follows are discussions and reports leading to her exit.

Boris Johnson gives his view

On Friday, July 21, The Times reported that NatWest was likely to face a deluge of subject access requests from angry ex-customers:

NatWest is set to be deluged with demands from “debanked” customers attempting to discover why they lost their accounts.

A Facebook group of 10,000 people, claiming to have had their NatWest accounts shut, has been filled with customers sharing templates and instructions on how to get hold of data held about them.

It comes after Nigel Farage used the “subject access request” (SAR) — a data protection right — to obtain a 40-page dossier outlining the reasons behind Coutts’s decision to drop him. It led to an apology from NatWest Group’s chief executive yesterday …

Writing on the Facebook group called “NatWest closed down my account” one former customer said: “I have just submitted a subject access request on NatWest, here is a link. I encourage everyone on this group to do so, let’s keep them busy.”

Another shared a template of a request sent directly to Dame Alison Rose, NatWest’s chief executive. He said: “I strongly believe that we all have the right to know why our accounts were closed. If you’re in the same situation, I encourage you to send a similar request to NatWest …”

NatWest said: “We would always encourage customers who have any queries about their accounts to contact us directly in the first instance.

“Customers who wish to obtain a SAR have a right to access and receive a copy of their customer data, and can do so by visiting natwest.com.”

The following graphic came from another source, but these sections of the GDPR (data protection law) may be relevant:

That evening, The Times posted another article, ‘Nigel Farage: Boris Johnson points finger at NatWest boss Alison Rose’:

Boris Johnson has called for the banking chief at the heart of the Nigel Farage fiasco to lose her job if she leaked confidential information, as MPs challenged her lucrative bonus.

The former prime minister said he would “wager the entire contents of my own personal bank account” that Dame Alison Rose, chief executive of NatWest Group, had discussed Farage’s account at Coutts, a subsidiary, with Simon Jack, the BBC’s business editor.

The journalist and the banking executive sat next to each other at a BBC correspondents’ charity dinner at the five-star Langham Hotel across from Broadcasting House on July 3.

It was one day before Jack published a story suggesting Farage had not met the wealth threshold for Coutts – a claim later proven to be false.

Johnson, writing in The Daily Mail, said: “I would bet my house that it was no coincidence that the following day Simon Jack ran a BBC story claiming that the decision by Coutts to whack Farage was nothing to do with politics.

“Is there anyone who seriously thinks that Alison Rose was not involved — especially since neither party is now willing to comment?”

Johnson called for Andrew Griffith, the City minister, to establish the facts about “how a false impression of Farage’s financial circumstances was given to the media”.

He added: “I am afraid that if Dame Alison was in any way responsible then she really needs to go” …

Johnson said he “vehemently” supported Farage over the row. He added: “This is about far more than the bank account of one person. It is about freedom under the law, for everyone in this country.

“It is about the freedom to think and say what you believe — provided you don’t break the law — without the fear of open or covert persecution.

“That freedom made our country great. It is under threat. It is time to fight.”

Meanwhile, Rose had been seen at various public events just before the Farage farrago broke. Fellow guests were bemused:

Yesterday, it emerged that Rose had raised eyebrows at the sustainability event for the space industry just 24 hours before the Farage scandal broke.

She mingled with guests including astronauts Tim Peake and Chris Hadfield at the Buckingham Palace event on June 28.

It was hosted by the King as part of his Sustainable Markets Initiative, of which NatWest is a member, which aims to accelerate the world’s transition to a sustainable future.

The event was to encourage the global private sector to align space exploration with sustainability.

One source claimed that “no one knew” why Rose was there and that other guests were “bemused” by her presence.

It was her second climate change event of the day, June 28, after she attended the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in the morning.

During an interview at the summit, she said the “climate emergency” was the “biggest challenge we are going to face”.

The article reminded us of her enormous salary and sizeable bonus — as well as the banking group’s priorities, which are not in maximising profits. It is worth remembering that since the banking debacle of 2008, part of NatWest Group has been owned by the taxpayers. Currently, we own 39% of NatWest:

In February, she took home a bonus of £643,000 — split half in cash and half in shares. Last year, she earned £5.2million. She was the first NatWest Group chief executive since the 2008 taxpayer bailout to get an annual cash bonus.

Craig Mackinlay, a Tory MP, said: “Going along to various fringe events in the net zero and sustainability field does not sound to me like attempts to maximise profits for shareholders.

“She is being paid a very, very generous salary and it is obvious that the bank is off on a strange path under her watch. There should be question marks over her future bonuses” …

A source close to the bank defended supporting climate change, describing it as a “growth lever”.

In addition to Net Zero, there is another aspect to the bank’s policies:

James Clarry placed his role as the Coutts & Co diversity champion front and centre of his professional responsibilities at the bank (Tom Witherow writes).

The former chief operating officer, 50, wrote on his LinkedIn profile that he “founded allyship programmes” and “won multiple awards in recognition of inclusive leadership” — above other attributes such as “delivering growth” and “generating revenue”.

The executive, who lives with his wife Annie, told followers online he had been hailed as “Champion Ally” at the 2021 Ethnicity Awards. His name came to the fore after Coutts told a client of almost 30 years that accounts of clients under suspicion of racial or discriminatory conduct would be referred to the senior leadership team, including Clarry, for a “final decision”.

Clarry, a former head boy at a grammar school in Buckinghamshire, studied law at the University of Nottingham in the 1990s, beginning his career at Allen & Overy, a “magic circle” law firm (one of the five most prestigious London-headquartered multinational law firms). His first job at the Royal Bank of Scotland was as a solicitor in its global banking and markets division. He rose through the ranks before transferring to Coutts — which was owned by the RBS Group — in 2011 where, as its general counsel, he was treated to regular travel to Jersey, Switzerland and Asia. As the chief operating officer, he was the chairman of the wealth businesses risk committee, a member of the reputational risk committee and a regular among those attending the Coutts risk and audit committee. He listed “awareness raising” among his “skills” online.

One wonders whether he was still in charge of the wealth business risk committee and a member of the reputational risk committee when Coutts made the decision to close Farage’s accounts.

Clarry has since moved on from Coutts to charity:

Last month he left to take up a job at social justice charity Justice and Care, which tackles modern slavery. On leaving, he wrote: “I have many incredible memories, but I am particularly proud of our work on gender and ethnic equity.”

The Sun reacts

On Sunday, The Sun‘s veteran columnist Trevor Kavanagh wrote:

NIGEL FARAGE has not just blown the bloody doors off Coutts bank and its Stasi-style spying.

He has exposed a conspiracy to shift this country permanently to the left — through Whitehall, the police, town halls, the BBC and the boardrooms of Britain.

Coutts’ dossier of lies, cover-ups and officially sanctioned surveillance provide a devastating glimpse of the Brussels-loving, Brexit-hating, woke-worshipping Blob at work.

Coutts, favoured by the very rich, from Mafia crooks to the King of England, has been caught with its pants down, in flagrante.

It is not just Farage who has been singled out for expulsion from woke society.

Tens of thousands more have found their banking lifeline cut off for no reason.

Kavanagh blamed a British organisation called Common Purpose:

… they may actually be victims of another shadowy organisation, known as The Octopus, set up in the Blair era, whose tentacles reach into every nook and cranny of our daily lives.

Its real name is Common Purpose.

You have almost certainly never heard of it.

But it has grown in two decades from a small group of influencers under middle-class networker Julia Middleton into a global multimillion pound charity with leverage in the highest places.

In 1988, she spelled out how to do it.

“A small, committed and co-ordinated group of people producing pressure from the outside,” she said.

“Two or three determined fifth columnists on the inside. And the stamina from both groups to keep on and on and on putting them on the agenda until they eventually had to be discussed.”

Even she might be surprised how successful these plans would prove.

Kavanagh cited examples of the organisation at work over the years in many areas of public life:

CP’s luminaries include ex-Met boss Cressida Dick, ex-EU Commissioner Chris Patten, council bosses and top civil service mandarins who pay £5,000-plus for lessons on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, the issue at the heart of the Coutts row with Farage.

Its clients may also include Coutts itself, just as its relation, the Royal Bank of Scotland, was before being bailed out by the Goverment in 2008.

The Sun last week asked Coutts if any senior figures — including chief executive Dame Alison Rose — have attended such courses.

So far, no response.

The same question could be put to Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, which also designated EDI [Equity, Diversity and Inclusion] as its primary goal — apparently ahead of cutting inflation.

The BBC is certainly a supporter.

During his time at the Beeb, ITV’s political editor Robert Peston recalls a CP course which ended “with a collective wail about the irresponsibility and excessive power of the media”.

Talking of irresponsible media, Alison Rose is the alleged source of inaccurate claims (aka “lies”) peddled by the BBC’s Simon Jack that Farage did not have enough cash to justify his Coutts account.

Both Rose and Jack now risk losing their jobs.

Common Purpose ranges far wider than Brexit-bashing, Gay Pride, trans issues and Net Zero.

It is closely linked with anti-press hypocrites Hacked Off, who want newspapers regulated by the state.

Political censorship is also backed by another totalitarian group, which pressures advertisers to withdraw business from media whose views they disagree with.

They’re the modern equivalent of book burners.

They bully advertising agencies into denying publicity for organisations deemed to be on the wrong side of the culture wars — such as The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express and GB News.

Kavanagh pointed out that Labour had no comment on the Farage farrago or woke banking:

Interestingly, Sir Keir Starmer’s press-bashing Labour Party has had absolutely nothing to say about this scandal.

As for woke banking, it has been going on in the US for some time as well. In that sense, I’m not sure that Common Purpose is all to blame. I’m pretty sure this originated in the US.

In my post on Friday, I cited The Telegraph‘s Alison Pearson, who discussed Environmental, Social and Governance — ESG — policies and scores:

So alarming is the tentacular stranglehold this philosophy has over financial institutions that, back in the spring, Governor Ron DeSantis took steps to ban ESG in Florida. He called it “woke banking”. “What it’s evolved into is a mechanism to inject political ideology into investment decisions, corporate governance, and really just the everyday economy,” said DeSantis. ESG policies were enforced by “elites” in financial institutions to push “woke” political agendas which did not not prioritise financial interests. 

The BBC apologises to Farage

My last post on Farage’s bank account was dated Friday, July 21. At that point, Conservative MPs were aghast that the head of one of the UK’s largest banking groups would discuss a former customer’s account with a BBC reporter, especially over dinner. While Dame Alison had apologised, the BBC had not.

On Monday morning, July 24, The Express reported that a former BBC newsreader urged the corporation to apologise to Farage for its error in reporting the story:

A former BBC newsreader has called on one of the corporation’s journalists to apologise to Nigel Farage over a story about his bank account being shut.

Nicholas Owen made the comment about a report by the BBC‘s business editor Simon Jack that the ex-Ukip and Brexit Party leader had been cut off by Coutts because he did not meet the wealth threshold.

But it has since emerged that Mr Farage’s account was closed because his views did not “align” with the prestigious private bank, which is owned by NatWest.

The BBC journalist sat next to NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose the night before the article was published earlier this month.

Mr Owen told GB News: “Simon Jack is a jolly good journalist, jolly good at his job, and he sits next to a banker who gives him a line on the Nigel Farage story, well, of course, he’s going to go with that, it’s a jolly good source.

“But if that source turns out to be wrong, the facts are simply the other way round as Nigel himself has now discovered in great detail, then for goodness’ sake, just put your hands up. Simon, come on lad, just say ‘Sorry, got that wrong’.”

Mr Farage has written to the head of the Beeb demanding a formal apology over its reporting on the closure of his Coutts bank account.

In his letter to director-general Tim Davie, he said he had faced “humiliating” publicity due to the corporation’s article.

It cited a source as saying the move to close his account was a “commercial” decision rather than political reasons as he was claiming.

The BBC has since published an update to the original story by business editor Simon Jack, admitting it “turned out not to be accurate”.

Yet, an apology had not been forthcoming. The ‘turned out not to be accurate’ statement appeared on a previous evening news bulletin and on the corporation’s webpage, without a personal admission to Farage himself.

It was only late on Monday afternoon that reporter Simon Jack finally apologised to Farage:

Guido Fawkes noted (red emphases his):

Took him long enough. Nige’s legal threats probably woke him up a bit…

Farage tweeted his thanks for Jack’s apology and said that the BBC News CEO Deborah Turness also apologised to him:

Farage covered the corporation’s apologies on his GB News show that evening, acknowledging them as ‘fulsome’ and ‘very, very rare’. He then turned his attention to Coutts’s head, Peter Flavel, from whom he has heard nothing, and said he wants to get ‘the absolute truth’ on what happened. Farage said he has now put in a subject access request to NatWest, his previous one had been to Coutts, which produced the shocking 40-page report, which I covered on July 20. Farage ended by thanking Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Andrew Griffith MP for their support:

On Tuesday, a BBC report told us:

Mr Farage said he accepted the apologies “with good grace”, but said questions for Coutts remained.

He thanked BBC News CEO Deborah Turness – who has written to him – and business editor Simon Jack – who has tweeted – for their apologies.

“It’s not often that the BBC apologise. But for the BBC to apologise, I’m very, very pleased,” Mr Farage said.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, Mr Farage said he had had to publish a lot of material in order to clear up misinformation in the wake of the 4 July story.

“I had to go to very great lengths and great personal damage to undo the story,” Mr Farage said.

“There is no fault or no blame on the BBC. This now goes right back to the Natwest Banking Group [owners of Coutts].

“Someone in that group decided it was appropriate, legal and ethical to leak details of my personal financial situation.

“That, I think, is wrong on every level – and that is where the spotlight should be and it will.”

Mr Jack, who tweeted his apology, said his story had been “from a trusted and senior source”.

“However, the information turned out to be incomplete and inaccurate. Therefore, I would like to apologise to Mr Farage,” Mr Jack continued.

Mr Farage later said: “Jack says, in the tweet, that his information came from a trusted and senior source. I would suggest that it may well have been a very senior source.”

On 21 July, the BBC updated its original article to say it had “not been accurate”. Mr Farage then asked for a formal apology from the BBC.

On Monday, the BBC said on its Corrections and Clarifications website: “We acknowledge that the information we reported – that Coutts’ decision on Mr Farage’s account did not involve considerations about his political views – turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage.”

The de-banked Anglican priest

On Tuesday evening, The Telegraph published the Revd Richard Fothergill’s story about his cancellation by Yorkshire Building Society, ‘Not even Reverends like me are safe from the banks’ woke purge’. I covered his story on July 6.

He says that, as a Yorkshireman, the building society had always been a part of his life. His father had an account there for a quarter of a century, and he had an account there for 17 years, then:

Like millions of savings account holders, I received an email from them nearly every month saying “How are we doing? We want to hear from you!”. In May one such message came through promoting the upcoming LGBTQIA+ Pride month in June, so I used this as an opportunity to offer feedback.  

I wrote back two paragraphs expressing two views. One: was promoting Pride really such a good use of their time? Were there not implications for their brand?

Second: as a Minister in the Church, I expressed a strong ethical concern about the ‘T’ element of LGBT, particularly given how transgender ideology impacts children.

I thought nothing of it, and was pretty sure their Customer Relations department would just ignore me. At best, I assumed, if another 100 YBS customers pushed back, perhaps next year they would dial it down? I was obviously polite in my message to them, and lawyers who have seen both our pieces of correspondence confirm this.

I heard nothing from them for two weeks. Then a rather sharp letter suddenly arrived. It declared: “Your comments will not stand” and “we must protect our workforce from prejudice”. Then, rather cryptically – given this was the first I had heard about it – it added: “The relationship between us has irrevocably broken down.”

Remember, I wasn’t criticising them for how they manage money or any particular individual; I was merely challenging their straying into contentious social issues pushing on us customers a particular worldview. They asked for feedback and I gave them some – it’s just that my comments were the wrong sort.

Afterwards, he got in touch with Toby Young’s Free Speech Union:

Initially I was going to ignore all this. But as I prayed, I came to feel the right thing to do was to stand up against this intolerance and bullying. I talked to my friends at the Free Speech Union and they put me in touch with an excellent journalist who wrote up my story accurately, and off we went. It has struck a chord with the public …

As a Church leader, I want to flag up the insidiousness of this cause which none of us had ever heard about five years ago. I believe we should all stand up against this woke worldview and be confident we are in the right, not being ‘discriminatory’, ‘intolerant’, or ‘bigoted’ for doing so. Far from it, we are protecting future generations from a creed which I and many others firmly believe puts minors on a pathway to gender altering surgery, sterility and much mental trauma.

I have great hope that Britons will not allow this to happen and that woke thinking will be removed wholly from our culture. In my view, a just, fair, tolerant culture is one based on the revelations of God through Jesus Christ. It says in the Bible, ‘it is for freedom’s sake that Christ has set you free’ and that applies to all aspects of life – freedom from bullying, freedom from fear, freedom to think for yourself, freedom to choose, freedom to worship and associate with whom you like.

Let’s not let a narrow group of woke extremists take that away. Let’s return to our foundations as a nation – one that knows and trusts in God.

I fully agree, but our nation is no longer ‘one that knows and trusts in God’, hence the problem!

Tuesday’s spotlight on Coutts and NatWest

Articles and commentary continued to emerge about Coutts and parent company NatWest on Tuesday, July 25.

In the late afternoon, The Telegraph published ‘Nigel Farage accuses Coutts boss of being “asleep at the wheel”‘, which concerns its chief, Peter Flavel:

Nigel Farage has accused the boss of Coutts of being “asleep at the wheel” throughout the scandal over its decision to “de-bank” him because of his political views.

Mr Farage, the former Brexit Party leader, said he had written to Peter Flavel three times but has yet to receive a reply, calling his handling of the situation “an absolute disgrace” …

Mr Farage was placed on a “glide path to exit” by the institution in March, and it is now set to pull down the shutters on his account within weeks.

The politician, who says he has been refused accounts at 10 other banks, has told Mr Flavel that he plans to turn up at a branch and withdraw his money in cash on the final day.

In an email sent to the Coutts CEO on April 19, he wrote: “I retired from active politics in January 2020, so doubt I can still be a politically exposed person.

“My recent business activity has been quite normal. Whilst I have no desire for this event to be in the public arena, I can’t help wonder that there may be some prejudice here.

“If other banks decided that I am too high profile, then both of us would be in a very interesting public position. What on earth is going on?”

The first paragraph of that email, dated April 19 — which is in the article — reads:

I have banked with Coutts for some years, both business and personal, and prior to that with Natwest since 1980. My personal manager, Mark Pierce, with whom I organised a mortgage repayment etc. left some months ago. A new man, Min Fung, replaced him, to whom I have never spoken before despite expressing to one of his juniors that I should. Out of the blue I receive a phone call to say the accounts will be closed, followed by a letter. No explanation is offered.

The bank’s head of client coverage, Camilla Stowell, got in touch with Farage. This means that Flavel had seen Farage’s email and passed it on.

On May 1, Farage wrote Flavel saying, in part:

As explained to her I have been rejected by several banks. On current course I will be at your branch on…the final date, wiht [sic] a security van to collect approx [the account’s balance] in cash.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Came there no reply.

On Monday, July 24, Farage wrote Flavel again, mentioning the BBC’s coverage and the subject access request (SAR) from Coutts. His message ended:

Not only was that briefing inaccurate and wrong but it was in clear breach of my confidential information. Despite all of this I still have heard nothing from you. Are you asleep at the wheel? Do you simply not care?

The article concludes:

Mr Flavel joined the high-end bank, owned by the NatWest group, in 2016. Before that, he worked for JP Morgan and Standard Chartered in Asia.

Mr Farage said he should be under pressure alongside Dame Alison Rose, the NatWest Group boss, who is fighting for her job amid speculation that she briefed the BBC.

He said of Mr Flavel: “It’s his people that wrote this document. It’s a pretty appalling report. I think it’s an absolute disgrace. I think his position is even more vulnerable than hers. This guy is directly responsible and has done and said nothing – it’s not good enough.”

Coutts has been contacted for comment.

That afternoon, reports had been coming in saying that Dame Alison had admitted she was the BBC’s source for the Farage story and that she had the banking group’s directors’ full support. This Twitter thread is from The Sun‘s political editor Harry Cole, a Guido alum:

A Telegraph article provoked an immediate angry response of 2,000 tweets within 50 minutes:

GB News shows featured updates as well as damning indictments from its presenters and panellists.

Nana Akua, substituting for Patrick Christys mid-afternoon, said that, whether or not the identity of the leaker emerged soon, Farage would pursue it to the end, then asked if Rose was responsible:

Michelle Dewberry said that she herself is a NatWest customer and disagrees with the directors saying that it is in the interest of ‘all’ customers and shareholders that Rose remain in place, when she had broken confidentiality laws. She questioned whether any of the people at the top of NatWest Group were ‘fit for purpose’:

Farage’s show followed. His editorial opened with the statement by NatWest’s chair, Howard Davies, that the bank’s board of directors had concluded Rose should remain as the CEO, ‘as demonstrated by our results’ over the past four years. He added that a review of account closure arrangements at Coutts would take place, the findings of which would be made public once complete. He said that the terms of reference and lead firm conducting the review ‘will be announced shortly’. Farage said:

‘NatWest CEO Dame Alison Rose, NatWest Group chairman Howard Davies and Coutts CEO Peter Flavel have all failed. Frankly, they should all go.’

Nigel Farage says NatWest are ‘doing their best to prop up Alison Rose’ after they refused to sack her over her BBC leak debacle.

His show had four more segments on his banking situation which followed: Conservative MP David Davis was on next, then a member of the Chartered Banker Institute, a business consultant discussing many SMEs who find it hard to get a business account and, finally, The Sun‘s former editor Kelvin Mackenzie, who minced no words. Mackenzie is, incidentally, a Coutts customer himself:

Jacob Rees-Mogg’s show followed. Rees-Mogg has been a Coutts customer since the age of 13. He discussed Rose’s position with former Channel 4 correspondent Michael Crick and former Conservative MP Jerry Hayes, who still works as a barrister. All lamented the deplorable situation of Farage’s account closure and agreed that, under the circumstances, Rose would have to go, either on Wednesday, when City Minister Andrew Griffith was holding a special banking meeting that day or, at the latest, on Friday. They agreed that Wednesday would probably be the day, because it was unlikely Rose would show up at Andrew Griffith’s meeting:

Dan Wootton’s programme followed. He opened with an editorial saying that politically-oriented bank closures must stop, otherwise we will find ourselves in a Chinese-style social credit score system:

As GB News’s broadcasts continued, The Telegraph had more news about Rose and her future.

The paper published ‘Dame Alison Rose’s statement in full: “I made a serious error of judgment”‘, the highlights of which follow:

I recognise that in my conversations with Simon Jack of the BBC, I made a serious error of judgment in discussing Mr Farage’s relationship with the bank. Given the consequences of this, I want to address the questions that have been raised and set out the substance of the conversations that took place.

Believing it was public knowledge, I confirmed that Mr Farage was a Coutts customer and that he had been offered a NatWest bank account.

How would the public know that Farage banked with Coutts? He only said so after the BBC did!

Even if we all knew that fact, which we didn’t, she just should have said she doesn’t discuss business, because it’s confidential. I worked briefly for a retail bank, and that was rule number one!

A former Coutts employee told Farage the same thing, saying that a cashier — teller, in American parlance — would be sacked for breaching client confidentiality:

She also said:

… I recognise that I left Mr Jack with the impression that the decision to close Mr Farage’s accounts was solely a commercial one.

I was not part of the decision-making process to exit Mr Farage. This decision was made by Coutts, and I was informed in April that this was for commercial reasons. At the time of my conversations with Mr Jack, I was not in receipt of the contents of the Coutts Wealth Reputational Risk Committee materials subsequently released by Mr Farage. I have apologised to Mr Farage for the deeply inappropriate language contained in those papers and the Board has commissioned a full independent review into the decision and process to ensure that this cannot happen again.

Put simply, I was wrong to respond to any question raised by the BBC about this case. I want to extend my sincere apologies to Mr Farage for the personal hurt this has caused him and I have written to him today.

I would like to say sorry to the Board and my colleagues. I started my career working for National Westminster Bank. It is an institution I care about enormously and have always been proud to be a part of. It has been the privilege of my career to lead the bank and I am grateful to the Board for entrusting me with this role. It is therefore all the more regrettable that my actions have compounded an already difficult issue for the Group.

The article also has the full statement from Sir Howard Davie, her boss, which Farage discussed in his aforementioned editorial.

A short time later, while Farage’s show was airing, the Telegraph View — the main editorial — stated ‘Alison Rose’s position is clearly untenable’:

… She had made a “serious error of judgment in discussing Mr Farage’s relationship with the bank”, she admitted, but had not revealed any personal financial information about him. She put the problem down to her leaving Mr Jack “with the impression that the decision to close Mr Farage’s accounts was solely a commercial one”.

Does she really think that is good enough? If her explanation was apparently so innocent, why did she not admit to the conversation last week, the first time she apologised to Mr Farage?

While the chairman of NatWest, Sir Howard Davies, last night expressed the board’s confidence in its chief executive, many investors and customers will consider Dame Alison’s behaviour to have brought the bank into disrepute. Not only was Mr Farage’s Coutts account closed because of his political views – a fact that NatWest only belatedly seemed to acknowledge – but its chief executive has allowed herself to be dragged into the row. Would Dame Alison accept such behaviour from her more junior employees? At best, her leadership of the bank looks stunningly inept.

Indeed, her position is clearly untenable. Banking might have been transformed by the digital age, but the relationship between customer and institution still depends, ultimately, on trust. She has surely sacrificed the trust of swathes of the public horrified by the treatment of Mr Farage.

The British state retains a substantial stake in NatWest, part of the legacy of its bailout during the financial crisis. If Dame Alison cannot see that her continuing as chief executive has become a distraction for a business that still has not fully recovered from its near-collapse in 2008, the Government should force the board’s hand and replace her.

By the time Dan Wootton was into the first half-hour of his show, Conservative MPs were weighing in on the situation. The Telegraph posted ‘NatWest boss’s Farage leak admission prompts “significant concern from No. 10″‘:

… Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are understood to have “significant concerns” about Dame Alison staying in her post. There is expectation within the Government that she will have to quit …