The Bank of England’s decision to jettison historical figures, like Winston Churchill, from its banknotes and feature British wildlife instead has caused quite a stir.
The design change follows a public consultation during which animals and birds emerged as the most popular image choice. But critics are lining up to register their horror. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused the Bank of “erasing our history”, and an audience member on BBC’s “Question Time” said it was “surrendering to the radical left”.
‘Values under attack’
“For more than 50 years, we’ve chosen to honour our greatest citizens” on our banknotes, in tribute to their “genius, courage and creativity”, said Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat in The Telegraph. Swapping them for “badgers, puffins and red squirrels” shows we now “lack the courage to state publicly who we are”. Erasing Second World War cryptanalyst Alan Turing from the £50 note severs “the link between citizen and story” and suggests “we care less for codebreakers than cuddly carnivores”.
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This is “not a neutral act”, said James Price on City A.M. It’s dangerous to flatten “our visual realm” and “erase the uniqueness of our national story”. Britain feels ever more “like an airport terminal with a welfare state attached”, rather than “a home”. No wonder there’s a backlash: the “penny is dropping that our history and our values are under attack. We should never, never, never surrender them.”
It’s goodbye to the “proud tradition of honouring our greatest Brits”, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. “Charles Dickens, George Stephenson, the Duke of Wellington and Elizabeth Fry have all made appearances” on our banknotes over the years; “somehow, a red robin is never going to have the same resonance”. I think the Bank of England “is doing its best to kill off paper money”; certainly, rejecting tradition and favouring what will look “suspiciously like an emoji” will only help.
Silly controversy
I hear the “scoffs and cries of wokery” but I think “the move is a stroke of genius”, said Emily Watkins in The i Paper. “I’ll take a badger over Winston Churchill any day.”
“Our nation is too various to be represented by a handful of dead people stamped on notes – that’s something to be celebrated rather than bemoaned.” There is “no figure in history who can represent, let alone please, everyone”, so, really, the Bank is “saving us all endless grief”. By “representing no one, animals represent us all”.
I can’t think of a sillier public controversy, said Oliver Kamm in The Times. Depicting historical figures on banknotes “is not some hallowed tradition”; it only began in 1970. Presumably, the Bank was not “captured by forces of wokeness” for the 276 years of its existence before then.
Counterfeiters have more “sophisticated printing equipment”, so it is in everybody’s interests that the Bank “thwarts their efforts by regularly changing the appearance” of notes. It is more important to have a paper currency that “commands trust in the corner shop” than one “that bathes us in a patriotic glow”.