Arriving in court shuffling behind a wheeled-walking frame, with a full white beard and wearing a scarlet scarf, Paul Flowers at times bore more than a passing resemblance to Richard Attenborough as Kriss Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street. But the life of the former chairman of Co-op Bank has been an object lesson that appearances can be deceptive.
Flowers – a one-time Methodist minister – was due to be sentenced on Monday after pleading guilty to swindling a female friend and spending the money on wine, theatre tickets and luxury holidays. Earlier this year, Flowers admitted 18 counts of abusing his position as a power of attorney for Margaret Jarvis and after her death, when acting as an executor of her will.
Manchester Crown Court heard that the fraud totalled more than £180,000, but Flowers submitted a plea in which he admitted to just under £100,000 of fraudulent activity. This was accepted by prosecutors and the crimes were described as a “gross breach of trust”. Prior to sentencing, the defendant’s lawyer claimed their client was in poor health. The case was delayed last year after Flowers suffered a stroke.
The sentencing may well represent a fresh nadir for Flowers, but the downward trajectory began at least 10 years ago, and arguably well before that. There can have been few more precipitous falls from grace in British public life.
Born and raised in Portsmouth, Flowers worked as a teller at NatWest bank for four years before training for the ministry. He studied theology at the University of Bristol in the 1970s. He subsequently claimed to have been raped by a fellow student during this time, which resulted in suppressed trauma and a life-long difficulty in maintaining romantic relationships.
By all accounts he was a good and well-liked Methodist pastor for more than 40 years, and at one time presided over one of the fastest-growing churches in Bradford. He was known for being friendly, welcoming to asylum seekers and earned the respect of many by overcoming serious homophobia as an openly gay man.
Drawn to politics from a young age, he served as a Labour councillor in both Rochdale and Bradford. He was chosen by the Labour party as its candidate to become the member of parliament for Meriden, Warwickshire in 1985, but stood down when concerns were raised about his past.
At the time, Flowers blamed a “whispering campaign” about his sexuality, which he had never sought to hide. He had also been convicted of gross indecency in 1981, which he described as “the sort of offence to which gay people are susceptible within a pressurised and intolerant society”.
In 1990, Flowers was convicted of drink-driving. The incident resulted in a church disciplinary hearing, but he was allowed to continue in his ministry. In 2004, he resigned from Lifeline, a Manchester-based drugs charity he had chaired for 16 years, after being accused (but subsequently cleared) of claiming false expenses.
His failure to become leader of the Labour group of Bradford council in 2005 was said to have left him embittered. He subsequently channelled his political ambitions into the Co-operative movement, which he joined in his teens. He was appointed to the board of the Co-op group in 2008 and then chairman of the Co-op Bank in 2010.
The high street lender had just merged with Britannia Building Society and was attempting to buy hundreds of branches of Lloyds Bank. It was also struggling with its IT system. That same year, Flowers was appointed to the Labour Party’s finance and industry advisory board by then leader Ed Miliband.
Things started to come unstuck for the Co-op Bank when regulators tightened up capital adequacy rules following the financial crisis. Flowers approved a recapitalisation plan but this was scotched by Euan Sutherland, the recently arrived chief executive of the Co-op Group.
Flowers was eventually forced to resign after a black hole was discovered in the bank’s finances, prompting an emergency £1.5 billion rescue by two US hedge funds in June 2013. It subsequently transpired that Flowers was also leaving the group board over alleged irregularities with his expenses.
The Conservative government of the day latched onto the scandal because of Flowers’s close ties to a number of Labour figures and the importance of the Co-operative movement in shaping the Labour Party’s approach to business and economics. In a disastrous Treasury Select Committee appearance following the bank’s rescue, Flowers repeatedly struggled to grasp important figures. At one point, he told MPs the bank had assets of £3 billion; the actual number was closer to £47 billion.
The episode raised serious questions over how someone with so little financial experience could have been appointed to such a senior role within a bank. The financial watchdog’s decision to rubber stamp his appointment was also taken as a prime example of the kind of light-touch, hands-off regulation that had characterised the years leading up to the financial crisis.
Just days after the grilling by MPs, Flowers was filmed counting out £300 in cash to pay for cocaine and crystal meth, leading to newspapers dubbing him the “Crystal Methodist”. The Financial Times described him as a “latter day Falstaff who reportedly prefers young men to wenches and crystal meth to wine”.
The following year, in May, 2014, Flowers was fined £525 after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine, crystal meth and ketamine at Leeds Magistrates court. Flowers cited the stress of his Co-op role and caring for his terminally ill mother in mitigation. Soon after, he was once again caught on video snorting cocaine and entertaining rent boys at this home in Salford, Greater Manchester. He was sacked as a Methodist minister later that year and admitted in a BBC Newsnight interview: “I have sinned.”
It was at this point that Bradford City Council revealed that “inappropriate but not illegal adult content was found on the council computer handed in by Councillor Flowers for servicing” in 2011. When Flowers was confronted with the contents of his hard drive, he resigned immediately.
In March 2016, the Sunday Mirror ran pictures taken by yet another male prostitute of Flowers semi-naked, asleep and with crisps balanced on his nipples. In the wake of that incident Flowers set up an interview with the Guardian to get his side of the story across. In it, he attempted to square his faith and use of escorts by pointing out that Jesus befriended Mary Magdalene and other female prostitutes.
He also claimed he often ended up “counselling” the rent boys he had hired. In the same interview, Flowers admitted to “very occasionally” taking drugs and having sex with male prostitutes in Manchester’s Renaissance hotel during his time chairing the Co-op Bank, whose headquarters were in Manchester.
In March 2018, some five years after the bank had to be rescued, Flowers was banned from the financial services industry by the Financial Conduct Authority for having used his work email to send sexually explicit messages and to discuss illegal drugs and for using his work mobile to call premium rate chat lines.
Announcing the ban, Mark Steward, the financial watchdog’s head of enforcement and market oversight, said: “The role of Chair occupies a unique place of trust and influence. The Chair is pivotal in setting expectations of a company’s culture, values and behaviours. Mr Flowers failed in his duty to lead by example and to meet the high standards of integrity and probity demanded by the role.”
As examples of official understatement go, it will take some beating.
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