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Anti-Brexit campaigner is “de-banked” Anyone who gloated about the “de-banking” of Nigel Farage over his account will now realise, or they should have anyway, that the sword is double-edged:
Monzo initially refused to tell Ms Miller why her “True and Fair” party account would be closed in September. After the BBC contacted the bank about the case, it said it did not allow political party accounts and had made a mistake in allowing it to be opened. Monzo said it recognised the experience would have been “frustrating for the customer and we’re sorry for that”.
It is too easy to roll the eyes, and say “karma is a bitch”. What appears to be the case is that, as discussed in my post here, and in the comments, we just don’t have a fully free market banking system in the UK and much of the world today. The next time you read some idiot going on about “unbridled capitalism” or “neoliberalism”, point this out to them.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Unbridled capitalism may not be the right phrase but there does seem to be something unbridled about the behaviour of an industry where they get the privileges of being protected from a free market but then opportunistically adopts free market sounding rhetoric to justify how it treats the public (‘we have a right to refuse custom to whoever we want’, ‘no one has a right to a bank account’).
I tend to describe the current economic system as ‘actually existing capitalism’ as it’s not laissez-faire, neoliberalism has been ascribed too many contradictory meanings, but on the flip side I think it’s a stretch to call it socialism or communism.
When returning value to shareholders becomes a secondary objective to the mob of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”, then it is hardly unbridled capitalism.
Bridled Capitalism. With an idiot rider.
If the bank made it known in its terms & conditions that they do not allow accounts for political parties, and if such a term/condition is legal, and if it is enforced for all parties, then it seems to me that there was nothing unethical about closing the True and Fair account.
Not informing the customer of the reason why the account was closed, is another matter…
“If the bank made it known in its terms & conditions that they do not allow accounts for political parties…”
Can we reasonably assume that Ms Miller, like probably 99% of online humanity, merely clicked the button labelled ‘I have read the terms and conditions’ without actually doing so?
No, it is corporatism.
Sure but hard not to see the funny side 😀
We must condemn financial persecution of people for the “crime” of peacefully expressing their opinions – regardless of what side they are on. Bulldog Drummond is correct that this lady was a tool of the very people who have now discarded her – but we should still defend her, even though the lady would not defend us.
Perry is also right – this is not capitalism, this is a handful of vast corporations whose power comes from the Credit Money system (the Cantillon Effect) – Marxists who point at the present Corporate State of “public-private partnership” think they are vindicated – but they are NOT. It was Richard Cantillon, not Karl Marx, who warned against a monetary and financial system like this – although it is now on a scale (and at an extreme – an insane extreme) that Richard Cantillon could not have dreamed of.
Before anyone points it out – yes David Hume also warned against allowing such a mess to develop. So did Edmund Burke – and several Founding Fathers of the United States.
Corporatism is the correct word.
I refuse to allow the fine word “capitalism” go the way of “liberalism”. Let’s start reclaiming the language.
@Johnathan Pierce
‘actually existing capitalism’ is a good phrase. The No True Scotsman fallacy of ‘it’s not *true* communism’ didn’t work for the Bolsheviks and it doesn’t work for you.
Nah, it’s sloppy and just indicates a lack of understanding what “capitalism” actually is.
Except no one has tried to have a government with the goal of establishing capitalism. There are dozens of attempts to implement socialism, all of which have failed. The ‘actually existing capitalism’ was never an attempt to implement capitalism.
“Faraday” – I see, so a system where government spending is about half the entire economy, the rest of the economy is under Corporate “public-private partnership” (cartels created by regulations) and the whole thing depends on “money” created from nothing (not Real Savings – actual Capital), is “capitalism”.
Pull the other one – it has got bells on.