The statue of former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill on Parliament Square in London. Photo / Luke MacGregor, Bloomberg
According to a stinging barb from United States President Donald Trump, Britons are being led by a Prime Minister who is no Winston Churchill.
Soon they will have to cope without the popular wartime leader on their banknotes too.
The cigar-toting mid-century Conservative is making way for creatures like hedgehogs and badgers.
That’s because the next generation of pound notes will feature wildlife native to the United Kingdom, according to the Bank of England, after half a century in which that status was reserved for historical figures including Churchill and Jane Austen.
The BOE held a public consultation on refreshing its money last year and found nature emerged as the 44,000 responses’ most popular theme. Historical figures came in third.
The bank said it was looking for images that symbolised the UK, resonated with the public and weren’t divisive.
Yet the removal of national icons from the notes still risks contention at a moment where the Labour Government has cloaked itself in an anxious patriotism.
Britain is again entangled in wars abroad, while at home the political landscape has fractured under the poll dominance of right-wing Reform UK.
The upheaval of the two-party system has parties warring over the nation’s symbols, of which Churchill is among the most potent - particularly for Conservatives.
In 2020 a reckoning with the country’s imperial past saw protesters pulling down statues of slave-owners, while Churchill’s own statue was boarded up during anti-racism protests that swept major cities at the same time as Black Lives Matter movement rocked the US.
One Conservative member of parliament dubbed plans to consider alternatives to historical figures “wokery” when the BOE’s consultation was first launched.
While competing to champion that strain of populism, Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, has been forthright in his criticism of the bank on issues from crypto regulation to quantitative easing.
“It says it all that Rachel Reeves is replacing Winston Churchill on our banknotes with a squirrel,” Reform’s spokesperson on the economy Robert Jenrick wrote in a social media post, even though the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not involved in the decision and the Bank of England hasn’t said Churchill will be replaced by a squirrel.
Picking a face to adorn the UK’s £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes hasn’t been without controversy in decades past.
Even Churchill, who Britons often rank as their favourite prime minister in polls, stirred criticism for displacing the only woman on the money at the time when he succeeded social reformer Elizabeth Fry on the fiver a decade ago.
As well as Churchill, the selected wildlife will replace author Austen, painter JMW Turner and WWII codebreaker Alan Turing on the reverse side of the notes, whose obverse features Charles III who became king in 2022.
The designs may also include other natural elements such as plants and landscapes, the BOE said.
“Nature is a great choice from a banknote authentication perspective and means we can showcase the UK’s rich and varied wildlife on the next series,” said Victoria Cleland, the central bank’s chief cashier. She said today that there could be scope to incorporate new features that convey movement.
“We could, for example, have a bird with its wings flapping. We could have a deer running,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live.
The change marks the next step in the evolution of British banknotes, which have been transformed in recent years for reasons of both taste and security.
In 2016, the Bank of England started to replace paper banknotes with polymer ones that were much harder to counterfeit. The £20 and £50 paper notes stopped being legal tender in 2022, with the £5 and £10 versions already withdrawn in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
While notes in circulation are still growing gradually, the use of cash in transactions has declined rapidly over the past decade.
UK Finance estimates that cash made up 48% of all payments in 2014 but that share had collapsed to just 9% by 2024. It has largely been replaced by card and mobile payments.
The UK’s money has featured William Shakespeare, Charles Darwin and Adam Smith since images of historical figures were introduced in 1970, a year before decimalisation. Before 1920, notes were usually one-sided.
Announcing the introduction of Churchill to the roster of banknote portraits in 2013, then-BOE Governor Mervyn King said: “It seems entirely appropriate to put Sir Winston on what is probably our most popular note”, adding that the fiver may soon become known as the Winston. It never did.
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