Nigel Farage Warns of Cashless Society ‘Tyranny’ as UK Treasury Chief Latest to Have Bank Account Blocked

Kurt Zindulka

The move to debank people in Britain — largely driven by the use of holdover EU directives prior to Brexit — could be part of a wider effort to usher in the “tyranny” of a cashless society, Brexit leader Nigel Farage has warned.

Nigel Farage, who recently revealed that his longtime bank had closed his account and that nine other banks refused to offer him their services, said on Monday that he fears the UK could be moving towards a situation such as in Canada, where the leftist government of Justin Trudeau froze the bank accounts of truckers protesting lockdown restrictions.

‘Mr Brexit’ noted that since coming forward with his experiences of being debanked, many other prominent figures in British political circles, now including the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, Jeremy Hunt, who reportedly was blocked from opening an account with the Online bank Monzo last year. Others such as Lord Clarke, who served as treasury chief under John Major, and Russian-British aristocrat Alexandra Tolstoy have both come forward saying that their accounts have been shut.

However, Farage noted that many more people without fame and fortune have come forward to him personally to share their own experiences with the British banking system shutting down their accounts including many cash businesses.

“They’ve got one thing in common, everything from the local window cleaner to pawn brokers, anybody involved in cash businesses have been losing accounts because they’re suspected of being money launderers. The whole thing is outrageous.”

“The ultimate fear is if we get CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies). We could finish up like the Canadian truckers, people who were within the law, found themselves outside the law and had their bank accounts frozen. Controlling people’s money would be the ultimate form of tyranny,” Mr Farage warned.

The television home of the Brexit leader, GB News has launched a petition against the impending cashless society, calling upon the government to “protect the status of cash as legal tender and as a widely accepted means of payment in the UK until at least 2050.”

The news network noted that over five million adults still rely on cash only to function in their daily lives in Britain and that the currency is used in six billion transactions every year. However, there has been an increasing push to go completely digital in Britain, a transition that was greatly accelerated during the Chinese coronavirus crisis.

“In the wake of the Covid pandemic, more and more shops, cafes and pubs are choosing to only accept card payments. And with the rise of Apple and Google Pay, vulnerable people who rely on cash are increasingly being left behind by the relentless march of technology,” the petition stated.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has also been at the forefront of attempts to introduce a ‘digital pound’ CBDC, a blockchain-based payment system similar to Bitcoin but completely controlled by the state. The director of fintech at the Bank of England Tom Mutton previously warned that a CBDC could be “programmable” by the government, meaning that politicians and bureaucrats could determine what is appropriate for citizens to spend their money on.

Nigel Farage has claimed that a total of nine banks have refused to offer him a bank account after his longtime account at the prestigious Coutts Bank was suddenly shut down. Farage has speculated that his blacklisting has come from being designated a Politically Exposed Person (PEP).

The PEP designation, which is supposedly intended to prevent political figures from engaging in money laundering and bribes, originated from an initiative by the G7 in 1989 and was later adopted by the European Union. With successive Conservative governments failing to rescind all EU laws and regulations following Brexit, the Politically Exposed Person classification is still on the books in Britain.

It is expected that the Parliament will update PEP rules to ensure that British citizens who are designated as such are treated differently and considered as “lower risk” by banks than foreign PEPs. However, this rule change is not expected to come into effect until next year, which Farage noted “isn’t really much use to” him as he continues to struggle to find a replacement bank.

Farage said on his nightly GB News show on Monday that he had gone to the lengths of paying thousands of pounds to view the contents of his “world compliance profile”. He told viewers: “this is what’s said by the big international agencies about me, and they have notes on you as well.

“In my case, it was a series of Guardian articles and EU disputes, when I was there at the EU Parliament and they were endlessly accusing me of wrongdoing. But what is much, much worse is on my profile there was a long list of family members… even associates and friends of mine are all to be treated as PEPs.

“This has now been confirmed and is, I think, deeply sinister and potentially could be misused by bad governments”.

The Brexit leader’s former bank raised eyebrows last week, when it took the extraordinary step to speak to the BBC and the Financial Times about the details of Farage’s personal account, claiming that it had fallen below the £1,000,000 deposit threshold. Yet, even the BBC’s Simon Jack was forced to acknowledge many other customers who came forward to say that they did not meet the threshold but had no action taken against their account.

“Why a bank thinks ethically or legally they can discuss anything about why financial affairs with the BBC and a wider audience is totally and utterly beyond me and I am taking advice on that as we speak,” Farage said.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter: or e-mail to: kzindulka@breitbart.com

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