Withering Emily Maitlis slams Nigel Farage's 'absolute right' to NatWest row

Former BBC journalist Ms Maitlis has denounced 'populist power' after Mr Farage expressed his anger at 'private banking classy" - claiming he became "totally entitled to victimization" during the NatWest line

Emily Maitlis said the NatWest crisis shows the 'power of the populist'

Former BBC journalist Emily Maitlis has delivered a scathing verdict on Nigel Farage accusing him of turning 'an absolute right into a victim' on the NatWest line.

Ms Maitlis denounced 'populist power' after Mr Farage expressed anger at 'posh private banking'.

NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose resigned dramatically in the early hours of yesterday morning after private bank Coutts – which she owns – became embroiled in the row.

Mr. Farage accused Coutts of shutting down his account because of his political views and produced an internal memo that appeared to support his claims.

Dame Alison later admitted speaking to a BBC reporter about Mr Farage's relationship with the bank.

Speaking on The News Agents podcast, Ms Maitlis said: "If you put aside the leak of client privacy, which we probably all agree is egregious, I think the only thing we learn from all of this is how to whip up a populist storm.

"Because at the heart of it all is a private bank's decision to tell a client who it felt was costing it too much and not making enough money for it.

"They offered him another consumer bank, which 95% of the population uses, and that wasn't enough.

"And he did, Farage did, an argument about free speech, about liberty, about censorship, when it wasn't."

She stressed that private banking was not a 'public service', but said the former UKIP leader had used a position of 'absolute right' to fuel the row.

The reporter continued, "Nobody was arresting him, nobody was stopping him from banking, nobody was insulting him.

Nigel Farage was scathing in his review of NatWest and Coutts (

Picture:

itvpeston/Twitter)

"They just waited for him to pay off a mortgage after deciding in advance that they would quit then.

"And it's not a utility. It's not electricity. It's a swanky private bank. It's in the name. Yet the power of this...