Bank Of England Spends £85k Researching How Best To Erase Churchill

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

The Bank of England has spent more than £85,000 of research money to justify wiping Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, J.M.W. Turner and Alan Turing off Britain's banknotes and swapping them for hedgehogs, foxes and puffins.

A Freedom of Information trail shows Savanta was paid £49,000 to run focus groups that told officials historical figures were "elitist and divisive."

Another £22,500 went on public consultations about which animals should replace them. The Bank called the result a "positive evolution," not censorship.

Bank of England spent £85,000 on research to justify dropping Winston Churchill and other British heroes from banknotes https://t.co/gtu6zPAEZ5

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) September 12, 2026

The October 2025 Savanta report, delivered months before the nature theme was announced, warned that portraits of notable Britons were "contentious and not representative of the UK's cultural and natural diversity."

Officials were told historical figures represented "a backward-looking vision of the UK that carries too great a risk of division and controversy."

Most of the 119 focus-group participants said featuring such people was "potentially divisive, elitist and disconnected from their own experiences."

Churchill sits on the current £5. Austen is on the £10, Turner on the £20, Turing on the £50. All are scheduled to go. King Charles stays on the front.

Governor Andrew Bailey is due to pick the animals by the end of 2026 from a shortlist that includes the European hedgehog, red fox, Atlantic puffin, barn owl, common frog and bottlenose dolphin.

What the fuck does a dolphin have to do with the history of Great Britain?

The Bank insists the driver was an earlier consultation of 44,000 responses in which nature came top, plus the need for new anti-counterfeit features. Chief cashier Victoria Cleland said: "The key driver for introducing a new banknote series is always to increase counterfeit resilience, but it also provides an opportunity to celebrate different aspects of the UK.

Nature is a great choice from a banknote-authentication perspective and means we can showcase the UK's rich and varied wildlife."

Critics were not buying the security alibi. Reform UK's Nigel Farage called the plan "absolutely crackers." Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said it was "erasing our history" and "a silly thing to do." Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Churchill "deserves better than being replaced by a badger."

The same Whitehall that now treats Churchill as a liability was simultaneously lobbying for something even more ideological. Cabinet Office officials from the Office for Equality and Opportunity wrote to the Bank's chief cashier arguing that current figures gave an "incomplete picture" of British identity. They wanted "greater representation of women, disabled people, ethnic minority communities and LGBT+ individuals" to "send a strong signal of progress and recognition."

Imagine that set of banknotes.

Shadow minister Alex Burghart said government officials had been "caught red-handed conspiring with the Bank of England to remove them from our banknotes." Banknotes, he added, "should feature the greatest Britons - the historic figures that unite our country. They shouldn't be chosen on the basis of Labour's equality laws."

This is not an isolated design tweak. It sits inside a years-long campaign against British history and culture.

In June 2020, Churchill's Parliament Square statue, the Washington statue and the Cenotaph were boarded up as Black Lives Matter riots rolled through London. A petition demanded the box come off. It was treated as a victory for the mob that wanted the bronze gone.

The statue has been defaced again since, including with pro-Palestine slogans in 2026. The pattern is the same: protect the monument from the crowd by hiding it, then treat the hidden monument as proof that the figure himself is the problem.

Now the United Nations has joined the lecture. A UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination guidance tells former slaving states that "public spaces should honour the contributions of people of African descent."

It wants statues, memorials, rewritten schoolbooks and "reparatory justice." Historian Matt Goodwin's response was two words: "jog on." Professor Robert Tombs called the campaign "sinister" and "a huge financial and political scam."

While Churchill is priced off the currency, Sadiq Khan's Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square has been given over to Tschabalala Self's five-metre Lady in Blue: an overweight black woman in a tight dress and heels, billed as an "everywoman" and "a symbol of confidence and purpose."

Self said she is "not an idol to venerate or a historic figurehead to commemorate." City Hall called it an excellent addition. Large parts of the public called it an eyesore bolted onto the square that holds Nelson atop his column.

So let's recap. They boxed up the county's greatest leader. Commissioned consultants to declare him elitist and divisive. Lobbied for identity-group replacements. Installed a cartoon figure next to Nelson. Invited the UN to demand African statues as atonement. Then they spent £85,000 proving that a hedgehog is less "divisive" than the man who kept the country free from Nazi rule.

God help us.

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