❓WHAT HAPPENED: The Bank of England plans to replace historical figures including wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill on banknotes with pictures of animals.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: The Bank of England, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Chancellor (Treasury Secretary) Rachel Reeves, and Robert Jenrick, of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Announced March 11, 2026, in the United Kingdom.
💬KEY QUOTE: “It says it all that Rachel Reeves is replacing Winston Churchill on our banknotes with a squirrel.” – Robert Jenrick
🎯IMPACT: The decision ends over 50 years of featuring British historical figures on banknotes.
The Bank of England has announced a controversial plan to remove historic Britons, including wartime Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and author Jane Austen, from banknotes. Instead, the new series will feature animals native to the United Kingdom.
Victoria Cleland, the chief cashier at the Bank of England, claimed that while the main goal is to improve counterfeit resilience. “Nature is a great choice from a banknote authentication perspective,” she said, although it is unclear why a banknote featuring a picture of a badger should be harder to counterfeit than a banknote featuring a picture of Churchill.
This change marks the end of more than 50 years of showcasing historic Britons on currency. Robert Jenrick, Shadow Chancellor for Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, criticized the decision, saying, “It says it all that Rachel Reeves is replacing Winston Churchill on our banknotes with a squirrel,” in reference to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury Secretary).
Notably, Starmer removed around five portraits of Churchill from the parliamentary estate after entering office, including a picture of the wartime leader standing next to the Cenotaph, Britain’s main national war memorial, in 1945.
Churchill is a frequent target of far-left protesters and academics, who portray him as a “racist” and a “white supremacist.”
Join Pulse+ to comment below, and receive exclusive e-mail analyses.