A last-ditch bid to stop Winston Churchill and other national heroes being replaced by images of wildlife on the nation’s banknotes was launched last night amid claims that Chancellor Rachel Reeves could stop ‘this woke nonsense’ if she wanted to.
The Conservatives unveiled a national petition to force Labour Ministers to order the Bank of England to ditch controversial plans for the design of future banknotes.
Tory frontbencher Alex Burghart accused Ms Reeves and other Treasury Ministers of hiding behind excuses that it was entirely up to the Bank to make the changes.
He said: ‘Rachel Reeves and other Treasury Ministers just stood idly by when they could have intervened to tell the Bank of England to drop this woke nonsense of replacing Winston Churchill and other national heroes with pictures of wildlife.
‘But it is not too late for Ministers to see sense.
‘That’s why the Conservatives are launching a petition to preserve the image of Churchill and other great national figures on our bank notes in a last-ditch attempt to protect our history and our heroes, of which we will always be proud.’
It emerged last month that the Bank was axing historical figures such as wartime leader Sir Winston, codebreaker Alan Turing and novelist Jane Austen from banknotes after being told they were seen as being ‘too elitist and divisive’.
Research commissioned by the Bank concluded that the figures were ‘not representative of the UK’s cultural and natural diversity’ and represented a ‘backward-looking vision of the UK’.
Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill who has been on the £5 note since 2016. The Tories have launched a last-ditch bid to stop Winston Churchill and other national heroes being replaced by images of wildlife on the nation’s banknotes
The inventor of the modern computer Alan Turing who has been on the £50 note since 2021. Research commissioned by the Bank concluded that the figures on the current notes were ‘not representative of the UK’s cultural and natural diversity’
However, the Bank itself insisted that the proposed changes were motivated by earlier research showing the majority of the public wanted to see nature on banknotes while Bank Governor Andrew Bailey insisted that it was necessary to change notes’ design from time to time ‘to stay ahead of the counterfeiters’.
But the plans have provoked from critics including retired British Army officer Colonel Richard Kemp who said ‘without great and courageous figures like Churchill and Turing, we may have swastikas on our banknotes today’.
And last night, the Tories claimed Parliamentary questions and research on Bank of England papers revealed that Ms Reeves had done nothing to intervene on the controversial changes.
They claimed that the Government had refused to amend a Memorandum of Understanding between the Treasury and the Bank regarding banknotes.
In a Commons written answer in April, Treasury Minister Lucy Rigby said there were ‘no current plans’ to change the memorandum which laid out that the Bank is ‘entirely responsible for the design, production, issue and distribution of banknotes’.
But Mr Burghart, who is Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: ‘Reeves is hiding behind this memorandum of understanding but she could very easily have changed it if she only had the will to do so.’
Ms Reeves’s office was approached for comment.
