Every time I go to the cash machine — an increasingly rare event nowadays — my daughter likes to inspect the haul of banknotes to see if we have received any bearing the image of the King, rather than that of his mother. We are yet to get one, three and a half years since Charles’s accession, but she has enjoyed seeing the other designs, sparking educational conversations about J.M.W. Turner, Jane Austen and Winston Churchill.

It seems, however, that such luminaries may soon disappear from the currency. It was reported this week that on Bank of England notes, famous historical figures will be making way for pictures of plants, landscapes and animals. The decision was made following a public consultation in which most respondents favored nature-based images.

One response to this is to say that it doesn’t matter, that times change and that cash is on its way out anyway. As many people have pointed out, the tradition of having great Britons on banknotes only began a little over half a century ago. Even the depiction of the reigning monarch is a relatively recent innovation, having started in 1960.

But equally, the removal of important national figures from the money in our pockets should be viewed in the context of the growing reluctance of Official Britain to assert a concrete identity, grounded in history and the achievements of a particular people. Instead, we are told to embrace universal abstractions, which have no real connection to the story of Britain and its constituent parts.

The most obvious example is the promotion in schools, universities and workplaces of “British values”, which are just a simplified version of the stated ideological commitments of Western liberals since the Second World War. That conflict is increasingly flattened in popular memory into a straightforward moral crusade against evil, rather than a conflict in which Britain fought with other countries in pursuit of particular goals.

In history lessons, British children no longer learn a coherent national narrative. Rather, they are seemingly presented with a hodgepodge of global events, organized thematically, intended to create obedient global citizens. The supremacy of human rights, under which Britons have lived since the late Nineties, has meant the gradual diminution of the old English common law, with its unsystematic but deeply human and practical doctrines. In turn, Britain has witnessed the ascent of a dogmatic and totalizing legal code which throws up deeply unjust outcomes in the pursuit of a “rational” system.

So these supposedly trivial changes do matter. It mattered in 2021 when Oxford University Press changed its logo to a dreary swirl, abandoning the crest of the university that had been used since the 16th century. It mattered when Civil Service guidance was amended this year to encourage the use of “UK Government” rather than “HM Government” in communications and publicity. Countries don’t lose their coherence and distinctiveness in one fell swoop, by one single and obvious blow, but instead thanks to a constant acid erosion of all that makes them unique and self-confident.

It may be true, as a member of the Bank of England’s wildlife panel said, that “the wildlife of the UK is not separate from our culture”. But many countries have squirrels and fish and attractive landscapes, whereas Turing and Turner and Austen are unmistakably British. When individual geniuses disappear from banknotes, we will lose a small but important everyday reminder of what makes us who we are as a nation.

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Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

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