“This is a major move against the possibility of an independent media” in the UK.
Our July 3rd post, “The UK’s Latest ‘Debanking’ Scandal Should Give Everyone Pause“, set out how the British left-wing news website The Canary became the latest victim of the UK’s debanking craze. The news outlet accused Lloyds Banking Group of “withholding a substantial amount” of its money after nearly a decade-long business relationship.
The news outlet — which brands itself as “radical working-class media” and whose sharp reporting on Labour’s capture by Big Business has been a headache for the party bureaucracy — said Lloyds had not explained “why it ha[d] taken this action… despite multiple communications from us”.
In a statement, the Canary speculated as to the possible reasons behind Lloyds’ decision, including its anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine stance:
Whilst we do not currently know the reasons behind our debanking, we cannot afford to be naive about this.
We do know that multiple other politically engaged people have suffered similar actions by other banks in recent times. It is not lost on us that powerful banks are able to restrict the financial activity of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine organisations and individuals.
It is an outrage that the Canary has been unceremoniously dropped into financial instability with no notice or explanation from Lloyds.
Lloyds Bank’s decision to close The Canary‘s accounts came just two months after the publication announced the launch of a daily left-wing print tabloid — and what’s more, one that defends Palestinian rights. Following an injection of cash last year from used car and property website founder Cecil Hetherington, Canary director Steve Topple hailed the new tabloid as an alternative to the corporate press.
Now, the newspaper is on the verge of financial collapse. After its initial debanking by Lloyds, the Canary said it was in a “financially precarious situation” and did not know when “money that Lloyds is holding will be returned” or how it will affect “our ability to get another bank account in the future”.
“The immediate effect has been that we have been unable to pay any staff or contractors,” Canary director Steve Topple told Novara Media. “We have a large team, and all of them are now extremely distressed and in limbo… We are trying our best to mitigate the situation and have so far received much-appreciated support from members of the public.”
Now, two months later, the newspaper has suspended operations with immediate effect after being debanked by a second lender, Metro Bank. The Canary says it can no longer pay its staff, and its news operation is in jeopardy.
From the above press release:
The Canary has faced sustained attacks from both the political right and left, alongside repeated attempts to undermine our organisation and restrict our ability to operate. This has resulted in the Guardian publishing allegations against us today (Friday 4 September).
At the same time, Canary Media Limited has had another bank account blocked, resulting in yet another financial institution stopping us from accessing our money. We are currently awaiting a response from Metro, the bank responsible, for why it has done this. This has meant that once again, some staff were not paid for August.
We have seen members of our team targeted through their social media accounts, including accounts being hacked, restricted, or removed. Canary workers have been arrested, with another being assaulted by a far-right Zionist at a protest. Two others were attacked by the Israeli Defence Forces in Southern Lebanon.
We have faced significant pressure and repeated attempts to disrupt our work.
Yet we have continued regardless.
However, recent events have created circumstances in which we have been left with no responsible alternative but to suspend the Canary’s operations with immediate effect.
This is not a decision we have taken lightly, nor is it a decision caused by any failure of the Canary or its leadership. It is the direct consequence of the debanking of the Canary’s funds, the resulting financial disruption, and the serious internal consequences that followed.[1]
…
Projects that were ready to move forward had to be cancelled. Staff experienced delays in receiving their wages, with some employees waiting several days and journalists working abroad waiting longer.
At one point, the Canary’s website was unavailable for a few hours because the direct debit required to pay for the service could no longer be processed as the bank account had been closed. We had to pause payments to pensions’ provider NEST to ensure staff were paid instead.
These were not operational choices made by the Canary. They were consequences of a banking decision over which the organisation had no control.
As with Lloyds Bank’s decision, it is not clear why Metro Bank has decided to withdraw its banking services from The Canary. However, as Professor David Miller points out in the tweet below, it is highly likely that it “involved deep state manipulation.”
Metro Bank’s decision to debank The Canary has already triggered a fresh storm of outrage. Paul Holden, an investigative journalist and author of The Fraud, describes the latest attack on The Canary as “utterly chilling and Kafkaesque:
An outrageous assault o[n] free speech and media independence.
The Canary is a legitimate media outlet, independently regulated, and is being driven out of business. This will put its journalists in a position of serious hardship as they can’t be paid.
And the crazy thing is that they don’t even know why the accounts are being closed and have no way of rebutting evidence they can’t see!
This is the second time The Canary has been targeted by phantom allegations made by faceless actors. This absolutely STINKS of political targeting.
A country that shuts down journalism challenging the status quo and putting grannies in prison for holding signs… where are we going?
In his book, The Fraud, Holden documented how Morgan McSweeney, the operative behind Labour Together, the scandal-tarnished right-wing project that sabotaged Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party leadership and helped deliver Keir Starmer to 10 Downing Street, albeit not for long, actively sought to destroy The Canary. His mantra, apparently, was: “Destroy The Canary or The Canary destroys us.”
As we noted in our previous post on this issue, the UK government launched an inquiry into “debanking” in 2023 following the furore triggered by Coutts’ debanking of Nigel Farage. The inquiry, however, concluded that customers were not being “debanked” for political reasons.
As a result, not only has debanking continued but debanked customers now face the prospect of being blocked from setting up new accounts at other banks. As The Telegraph reported in July, the UK’s most powerful banking lobby group, UK Finance, is developing a platform that will enable banks to share information on suspicious customers:
Banks are planning to block “debanked” customers from setting up accounts with other lenders, potentially leading to innocent people being effectively locked out of the financial system, The Telegraph can reveal.
Lobby group UK Finance is developing a platform that will allow banks to share data on their customers where they detect “markers of economic crime”.
Lloyds, Barclays and Revolut have already started sharing data about customers, leading to accounts being frozen or closed, The Telegraph understands, following a pilot in 2024.
The data-sharing platform will build on that pilot to make a UK-wide system, which could automatically bar people from opening another account.
But concerns have been raised that thousands of innocent customers and businesses who have been debanked unfairly could be barred from opening up an account with another bank, effectively leaving them locked out of the financial system.
Another recent victim of debanking in the UK is the former Labour MP George Galloway whose accounts with Bank of Scotland, a subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group, were closed without explanation last week. Galloway, who is the current leader of the Workers’ Party, host of the Mother of All Talk Shows and a fierce critic of government policy, responded with the following tweets:
Galloway was a vocal critic of Farage’s debanking back in 2023 and is now a target of the same treatment…
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Nick Corbishley 