Banks must beware of going ‘woke’

Australian bankers must not follow in the footsteps of one of their ‘woke’ UK counterparts who was ousted this week after leaking details about high profile client Nigel Farage.

The good news story of the week. Nigel Farage: one; woke, utterly idiotic, bank CEO: not just zero but one big and I mean, right out the door, fat zero.

The British NatWest bank – which used to be a real bank until it became a woke broke joke – cancelled Farage, the renowned long-term and ultimately successful Brexit campaigner.

It did so because having him as a customer in the woke circles, in London and the capitals of Europe, in which bank executives like to swan, was, oh so terribly ‘pas a la mode’.

Well, Farage has now been UN-cancelled; and in turn the thoroughly woke NatWest CEO, Alison ‘risen without trace’ Rose, has herself been cancelled. From all appearances, good riddance and please close the door behind you. Her – entirely appropriate – sackable sin was to sit beside a BBC journalist at a dinner and both lie about Farage’s cancelling and break the number one rule of banking: disclose details of a client. Even though the ‘details’ she disclosed were false. Rose ‘confided’ to the – thoroughly fellow woke - BBC journalist that Farage had been cancelled as a client of NatWest’s private bank offshoot Coutts because he wasn’t a profitable customer.

NatWest chief executive officer Alison Rose. Picture: Daniel LEAL / POOL / AFP

The journalist promptly wrote the story and later said he had relied on a “trusted and senior source.” Well, the “source” was lying.

Farage acquired a 40-page document from Coutts that included a list of his political views that the bank felt created “significant reputational risks of being associated with him”.

Game set and match. Farage reinstated. Rose resigning “by mutual consent”.

Sorry, that in itself demands the sacking of yet another woke idiot, Howard Davies the chairman of NatWest.

Yes, she’s gone; but she should have been sacked for breaching bank confidentiality – not by “mutual consent”. Failing to do so, reveals the chairman’s own unfitness for office. Trust the Guardian non-newspaper to find, in all this, the real victim: Rose who had been “bullied” out of office.

A word to the ‘downunder wise’, Matt Comyn, Shayne Elliott, Ross McEwan and Peter King: take note, take very careful note.

This advice extends to their even woker chairmen: Paul O’Sullivan, John McFarlane and, the slightly less woke of the collection, Phil Chronican and Paul O’Malley.

Now, the really good news stories of the week – for you - were the better-than-expected inflation numbers and the Fed deciding to hike its interest rate yet again.

The inflation numbers were doubly good news: lower inflation is just intrinsically better, and it means the RBA won’t hike next Tuesday.

But equally, while the Fed hiking might hurt Americans – even though, its ultimately to their benefit, just as hiking will prove to have been for Australians - it’s immediately good news for everyone else.

Again, it’s good news in two ways.

The first is the ‘fixing’ of the US economy, still the most important for the world. As much as it can be fixed, of course, with $45tr of government debt.

And secondly, because Wall St has talked itself into being unfazed by rate rises, even going up after this hike.

With our market then inching back to near its all-time high.

Originally published as Banks must beware of going ‘woke’