Nigel Farage announced Reform's plans for new taxes on banks at Davos

Nigel Farage’s promise to tax banks more shows his Trumpian revenge coming out to play, and exposes the contradictions at the heart of Reform’s economic policies, writes Eliot Wilson

Seeing Nigel Farage at the World Economic Forum in Davos is almost as perplexing for onlookers as it must be for him. For a right-wing populist, Davos is the lair of the beast; the annual gathering of exactly the out-of-touch, net-zero promoting, ESG-embracing globalists who have brought ruination on Europe’s traditional industries and culture. Farage is there as an act of defiance, the tribune of the common man who will twist the tail of the establishment, warning them that the world order is changing.

Certainly he pulled no punches. Interviewed by Bloomberg’s Stephanie Flanders, he reaffirmed a commitment from Reform UK’s 2024 manifesto to scrap the interest the Bank of England pays to commercial banks on their reserves. This, the party claimed at the last election, would save £35bn “and has been endorsed by senior figures at the Financial Times, New Economics Foundation and IFS, as well as two former deputy governors of the Bank of England”.

In fact, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) is lukewarm at best on the idea; he has said on social media that such a move “is unlikely to raise even half the £40bn annually that has been suggested, and only in the short term”. But opposition........

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