The CEO of one of the U.K.’s largest banks announced her resignation last week after her bank, NatWest, dealt with the fallout after canceling the account of one of Britain’s most prominent politicians over his political statements.

Nigel Farage, the former leader of the U.K. Independence Party and main backer of Brexit, accused the bank’s subsidiary, Coutts, of closing his account because of his political views.

When the story started to pick up steam in the media, Alison Rose, the CEO, planted a bogus story in the BBC that Farage was not dumped because of his political views, but rather for a lack of cash in his account. The report claimed that Farage was dumped for “commercial reasons.”

But Farage ended up obtaining leaked internal memos that showed an investigation by the bank into his previous comments on politically sensitive issues like Black Lives Matter and immigration. His position on these matters prompted the bank to identify him as someone seen as “xenophobic and racist.”

The paper said Farage’s view appears to be increasingly out of touch “with wider society,” and his personal relationship with former U.S. President Donald Trump put the bank’s reputation at risk. 

The BBC reported that Rose admitted to planting the story and apologized for the “inappropriate language” in the paper that was obtained by Farage. The report said she insisted that it was “not her decision to close this account.”

Farage called for her ouster and said the paper read like a “Stasi-style surveillance report,” and a “pretrial brief drawn up by the prosecution case against the career criminal.”

The British government has a 39 percent stake in the bank following the 2008 crisis and, prior to her resignation, said it was “significantly concerned” about her leadership, which The New York Times said had all but sealed her fate.

“Despite a stellar performance as the first woman to take the helm of a U.K. bank, her mistake in discussing sensitive customer details with a journalist broke a sacred trust with the British public and her decision to step down was the only viable path,” Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, told CNBC. He continued, “But NatWest is no ordinary bank, it is still almost forty percent owned by the U.K. taxpayer, and the political and regulatory ramifications of this episode are likely to ripple out for months to come.”

Farage, a political commentator on GB News, said Rose’s resignation is a good start but he called on other members of the bank’s board to resign.

TRENDPOST: The most dangerous thing a person can do is speak up for a cause that has not been sufficiently approved by Big Business. These companies will destroy you. (See “ZUCKERBERG SAYS ‘ESTABLISHMENT’ ASKED FACEBOOK TO CENSOR COVID-19 INFO THAT PROVED TO BE ACCURATE” 13 Jun 2023 and “CENSORSHIP 2.0: U.S. PLANS FIGHT AGAINST ‘INFODEMIC,’ WANTS TO COMPLETELY CONTROL YOUR HEALTH DECISIONS” 7 Mar 2023.)

The fallout from Rose’s swift and inelegant “stepping down” is evident but her downfall does not give us any comfort. We can only imagine how governments and other companies treat the data of clients who do not align with their belief systems. How many more Alison Roses are out there suppressing content on social media and refusing to grant loans to business owners?