THE banking elite are a bit different to the rest of us – they get lavishly rewarded for failure.
If you or I got the boot from our day job, it is unlikely we would feel like we just got seven balls up on Euromillions.
But Dame Alison Rose, the NatWest boss forced to quit over the Nigel Farage banking scandal, will trouser a reported £2.43million over the next 12 months in salary, pension and share options.
There are claims that Rose could also receive a bonus of up to £2.9million and stock worth £6million — a bumper windfall worth up to £11.3million.
Nice unemployment if you can get it.
And the irony is that NatWest was one of the banks bailed out by the British taxpayer in the great financial crash of 2008.
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Fifteen years on, the Government still owns almost 40 per cent of NatWest.
So it is not their money the bank’s fat cats are being generous with — it’s yours.
And no matter how good a job Dame Alison did at NatWest over the past four years — and the general consensus is that she did a very good job indeed — there can be no denying that her downfall came because she brazenly disregarded the first rule of banking.
She broke client confidentiality.
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Sitting next to BBC business editor Simon Jack at the BBC Correspondents’ Charity Dinner, Rose let slip that Coutts — owned by the NatWest Group — had closed Nigel Farage’s bank account because he had dipped below the swanky private bank’s wealth limit.
Jack and the BBC gleefully ran with the story.
“Nigel Farage bank account shut for falling below wealth limit!” they gloated.
And it wasn’t true.
It emerged that Coutts closed Farage’s bank account because Mr Brexit did “not align with their values”.
The 300-year-old bank had a 40-page dossier on Farage detailing “the significant financial risks of being associated with him.”
So Coutts — and by association NatWest — did not close Nigel Farage’s account because he didn’t have the right money.
It was because he did not have the correct political beliefs.
And Rose not only broke client confidentiality — committing a sin that would have had any NatWest cashier immediately out on their ear — she lied. Sorry — “a leak” doesn’t quite cover it.
Now this lucky Dame will pocket more moolah over the next year than most of the “little people” who bank with NatWest will make in their working lifetime.
And what has always fascinated me personally about this ugly story is what Dame Alison Rose actually looked like when she was telling big fat fibs about Nigel Farage to the business editor of the BBC.
Because I am guessing that there was a degree of snickering going on.
Fabulously rich
I am assuming that there was a malicious smirk hovering around Rose’s cakehole when she told Simon Jack that Farage had failed to meet the financial bar at Coutts.
I reckon that Rose — a banker, lest we forget, and not a guardian of moral virtue — despises Farage and everything he stands for.
And it is impossible to understand how someone can act in such a grotesquely unprofessional fashion as Dame Alison Rose and then grow fabulously rich on the proceeds.
But I guess these fat cats always take care of their own.
And while Nigel Farage had his bank account closed by Coutts over fears of reputational damage, we now learn that serial killer Rose West, murderer of ten women and girls, was deemed fit to remain a customer of the Co- operative Bank.
I guess Rose West must have voted Remain.
Jen unlucky in love? Not a Pitt of it
JENNIFER ANISTON reckons that her attitude to relationships – maybe we are all better off alone – has a lot to do with her parents divorcing when she was nine.
“I didn’t like the idea of sacrificing who you were or what you needed, so I didn’t really know how to do that,” she says.
“So it was almost easier to just be kind of solo. So I didn’t have any real training in that give and take.”
Some say that twice-married, twice-divorced Jen, right, is unlucky in love.
Oh, I don’t know.
I will have to ask my female friends.
But surely no woman who was married to Brad Pitt for five years can be de-scribed as being unlucky in love.
FREDDIE MERCURY would have understood why Fat Bottomed Girls is being left off a new Queen compilation.
Fred would have quipped something cutting – he once told a colleague of mine at the NME, “Darling, I thought you would be editor of The Times by now!”
But Fred would not have objected to protecting the sensitive modern world from controversial Fat Bottomed Girls.
These old rockers always censor themselves.
If they live to be 100 – and they will – you will never again hear the Rolling Stones singing Brown Sugar.
Old rockers are canny coves. That’s why they last so long.
SPORT RACE FAITH
SPORT is colour blind.
When Tyson Fury fights Deontay Wilder, no boxing fan thinks of the bout as a white bloke fighting a black bloke.
When Fury squares up to Wilder, we see a heavyweight who can dance like Fred Astaire confronting a man who punches harder than anyone in the sport’s history.
Nobody gives a damn about the colour of their skin.
So how depressing to hear Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones complaining about the lack of diversity in England’s World Cup Lionesses on Sky News during a review of the papers.
“What jumps out at you is that this doesn’t represent diverse Britain,” suggested Wilfred.
“It’s all these blonde blue-eyed girls – and I wish them well – but I do think we need to ask ourselves questions about why there is a lack of diversity.” No, we really don’t.
There were players from ethnic minorities in the Lionesses’ squad.
They were there on merit. Sport doesn’t give a damn what race you are.
If only the rest of the world was the same way.
WILLIAM WINS FA
WHATEVER Prince William did last weekend, he was going to get slaughtered.
If Wills had made a flying visit Down Under to watch England play Spain in the Women’s World Cup Final, he would have been criticised by the green lobby.
I can see the HEIR MILES! headlines now.
And if he was in and out of Oz in 24 hours, chippy Aussies who want to ditch the Crown would have frothed at the mouth because he didn’t find time to kiss a few koalas.
So William’s decision to stay home and watch it on the telly was probably the least bad option, even though he was then slagged off for staying away – because he is President of the FA!
I hope William stays as the face of the FA because he is a genuine fan of our national sport.
And sometimes a future king just can’t win.
CROFT AN ACE CHOICE
IT is the time of year when grumpy old newspaper columnists love to moan about the contestants in the next series of Strictly Come Dancing.
But not this year. Annabel Croft has an incredible story to tell.
God’s first attempt at Emma Raducanu, at 15 Croft was the youngest Brit to play at Wimbledon for nearly 100 years. She retired aged just 21.
She retired at just 21.
And tragically, her husband Mel Coleman died in May after 31 years of marriage.
Annabel Croft has lived a life. And I bet she can dance, too.
LORNA ROSE TREEN won the award for the funniest joke at the Edinburgh Fringe.
“I started dating a zookeeper but it turned out he was a cheetah.”
Laugh? I didn’t even groan. I have had funnier Christmas crackers.
And I have a funnier joke.
I have a mate who is incredibly fit, works out every day, reads three books a week and has great sex in the shower every morning.
Yet he always complains about how much he hates being in prison!
See you in Edinburgh.
VIV LINE A NO-NO
THE conservative universe is increasingly excited about Republican Vivek Ramaswamy – a self-made billionaire raised in Ohio by parents originally from India.
Ramaswamy, 38, is widely being tipped as a possible Presidential alternative to Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
It is tempting to think that anyone would be better than confused Biden or deranged Don, who just became the first former US President to have his mugshot taken by the cops.
But Ramaswamy slavishly follows the disgusting Trumpian line on supporting Ukraine.
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It costs too much for the American taxpayer.
The free world does not need an American President who counts beans while Ukraine is fighting for its life.
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