With Iran in flames and the Mandelson Files showing at best a deep sense of complacency at the heart of government, the right was today in an absolute lather over something apparently even more serious: the decision by the Bank of England to replace historical figures on the next series of banknotes with British wildlife.
The Bank announced the move today, saying that images of wildlife would be difficult to counterfeit while also allowing for a celebration of nature across the country. A panel of experts will draw up a wildlife shortlist to be put before the public.
It follows a public consultation and series of focus groups on banknote imagery, which garnered 44,000 responses and showed nature to be the preferred theme, comfortably ahead of historical figures.
But did that stop the British right from claiming it was a woke Labour ploy to besmirch the good name of Winston Churchill? It did not!
First out of the blocks, inevitably, was Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who described the decision as “deeply depressing that under Labour our national heroes are considered too ‘divisive’ to be on bank notes” despite it being a Bank of England, not Labour, decision, and literally nobody mentioning anyone being divisive.
This led to lobby correspondents asking her spokesperson if the Conservative leader was ashamed of British animals, and him having to put on record that “the leader of the opposition is a big animal fan”.
Quick to follow Badenoch was former Tory leadership rival, now Reform’s ludicrously titled ‘shadow chancellor’, Robert Jenrick, who claimed that “it says it all that Rachel Reeves is replacing Winston Churchill on our banknotes with a squirrel”. Again, it’s not Reeves and no one has specifically mentioned a squirrel – but if by “it says it all” it means Jenrick will never feel the need to speak publicly again, we’ll take it.
GB News’s deputy political editor Tom Harwood was inevitably furious, posting on X: “I don’t buy it. Not for one second.
“They’ve ditched Churchill because he liked the Empire. Austen because she’s not feminist enough. And Turing because he slept with a 19 year old at the age of 40. They’re drowning in their own political correctness.”
The Daily Express’s senior political correspondent Christian Calgie, meanwhile – a man who long ago forgot it is a correspondent’s job to report on the news, not comment on it – posted an AI image of a young child decked out in medieval garb attempting to rouse a slumbering lion below a Union flag and the words “Wake up! Please wake up!”, the irony of using an actual animal to make his point being lost on him.
Good to know that the British right are getting their priorities straight. Even if barely anyone has actually used a banknote in the past six years.
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