When was it, do you think, that banks stopped being institutions that kept your money and started being guardians of public morality? Time was, I would get hauled into the Berkeley Square branch of the Allied Irish Bank (GB) to explain my overdraft situation; now bank managers have disappeared along with actual branches (my nearest one is in Belfast).
Instead, we get virtue signalling and, sinisterly, banks withdrawing accounts from people they don’t like. That includes, to date, “politically exposed persons”, or PEPs (who are subject to more rigorous financial checks), the Reform party and — says the MoD — many military contractors. Arms manufacturers fall foul of the code of investors who bill themselves as ethical — that doesn’t just cover the creeps who make cluster bombs, but manufacturers of the anti-tank missiles we want to provide Ukraine with. Individuals whose accounts are withdrawn aren’t just fund managers for Islamic State or money launderers, but are usually PEPs, and in many cases on an unaccountable list kept by World-Check, a company owned by the London Stock Exchange.
