Banks for the memory

Aninterrogation of one’s affairs by the bank manager, while less painful than interrogation of one’s root canal by the dentist, has seldom been a relaxing appointment.

Now it threatens to rival the Spanish Inquisition. Some banks are stealthily auditing clients’ social media postings and vetting their social circles to weed out undesirable clients. Britain’s government, for one, is considering regulations restricting the growing practice of de-banking”, since being unable to get a bank account is such a severe crimp on any person’s existence as to threaten their human rights.

It comes to something when the person who might save the developed world from this sinister discrimination is a political gargoyle of the magnitude of Nigel Farage.

The British anti-immigration campaigner and leading Brexit architect makes a most unlikely underdog, but so far has his ex-bank on the ropes.