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.
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.