Nigel Farage, NatWest and a political storm

NIGEL FARAGE, the front man of the Brexit campaign, has sown havoc in another British institution. Mr Farage had claimed he was the victim of “blatant corporate prejudice” after Coutts, a bank whose clients include the royal family, dropped him. The government agreed. Early on July 26th Dame Alison Rose, the chief executive of NatWest, Coutts’s parent group and one of Britain’s biggest lenders, resigned over her mishandling of the affair. The state remains NatWest’s largest shareholder. At a time when businesses appear ready to dump clients at the first whiff of controversy, ministers have laid down a marker.

Banks have been under increasing regulatory pressure to vet “politically exposed persons” for money-laundering risks. In 2012 Coutts was whacked with a £8.8m ($11.3m) fine for lax due diligence. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, businesses with links to Russia are under more scrutiny. But an internal Coutts risk report obtained by Mr Farage concluded that there was no sign of dodgy cash flows.