The British pound was once a byword for solidity and dependability. Anchored in gold, backed by empire, and administered by the steely technocrats of Threadneedle Street, the currency carried weight not merely in the physical sense of sovereign coins, but in the psychological assurance that it would hold its value. Those days, it seems, are long gone.
As Jacob Rees-Mogg, former Cabinet Minister and long-serving Conservative Member of Parliament, has observed with characteristic clarity, the Bank of England has become “the epicentre of decline management.”
In his recent blogpost on Letters from an Englishman, Rees-Mogg took aim at the Bank’s latest foray into cultural virtue-signalling: its obsession with redesigning banknotes.
This may appear trivial to the casual observer, but as Rees-Mogg rightly insists, “trying to make banknotes modern or, worse still, woke, is a pointless activity.” Worse, it is an act of institutional self-sabotage.
This is not merely a matter of taste. The integrity of a currency—especially a fiat currency like sterling—depends less on its convertibility and more on the confidence it commands. Banknotes are, to use Rees-Mogg’s term, “a fiction, possibly even a lie.” Since Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931, a £10 note has not been redeemable for anything of intrinsic value. Its worth exists because we all agree to pretend it does. As with most illusions, the more you fiddle with it, the more likely it is to shatter.
Fiat Currency and the Fragile Illusion of Value
“Since Britain left the gold standard,” Rees-Mogg writes, “the currency has been a ‘fiat’ currency. Fiat is the Latin word for ‘let there be’, as in ‘fiat lux’, the first words of direct speech in the Vulgate where God said ‘Let there be light’.” It is an apt metaphor. Where divine command produces light, central banks produce banknotes with nothing to back them but institutional credibility and collective faith.
In a fiat regime, money is conjured into being by decree. It cannot be redeemed for gold or silver; the promise to “pay the bearer on demand” is a legal anachronism. As Rees-Mogg points out, “Up until 1914, if a note holder went to the Bank of England with a ten pound note, he could ask for, and would receive, ten gold sovereigns in return.” Today, that same note can be swapped only for another, equally valueless slip of plastic.
This fundamental shift has had consequences. Governments, faced with crises, have reached again and again for the printing press. From the bailouts of 2008 to the Covid-era furlough schemes, billions in newly minted money have entered the economy with little regard for long-term stability. “The temptation to do it is always there,” Rees-Mogg notes, “because printing money has no immediate cost, as opposed to raising tax revenues or borrowing.”
History offers ample warnings. The Song Dynasty printed so much paper currency that it became worthless. French monarchs in the Hundred Years’ War debased their coinage systematically, calling in coins and reissuing them with less silver. The result was inflation and collapse of trust, outcomes as relevant today as they were then.
The Loss of Value and the Bank’s Role in Disguise
The cumulative impact of a century without gold-backed money is staggering. Rees-Mogg puts it plainly: “Since 1914, when easy convertibility stopped, a pound now buys less than a single penny’s worth of goods. Over 99% of sterling’s value has been lost.” A gold sovereign once worth one pound is now worth more than £575. That figure should chill anyone who still sees the Bank of England as a steward of value.
In such an environment, the only thing propping up the pound is trust, and trust is, as any magician knows, a fragile thing. It relies not just on policy, but on appearance. As Rees-Mogg rightly argues, “fiat currencies are basically fake; every effort must be made to maintain the fiction that they have some value.”
This is where aesthetics become essential. Money that cannot be redeemed for gold must instead appear authoritative, permanent, and majestic. It must look serious, even regal, to sustain the illusion of worth. That is why, Rees-Mogg observes, the US dollar has barely changed since 1928. Washington still presides over the $1 bill, framed by Latin mottos and austere federal emblems. The symbolism matters. It reminds users that, however volatile the economy, the institutions behind the currency remain stable.
Contrast that with the Bank of England, which seems to regard continuity as an obstacle and tradition as a problem to be solved. With each new series, our banknotes become more sterile, more obscure, and more ideologically pliant. Churchill, Darwin, and Nightingale once adorned our notes. Now there is a creeping push to replace them with lesser-known cultural figures, selected not for historic stature but for modern “relevance.”
This, Rees-Mogg warns, is a grave error. “Redesigning and making notes look less authoritative risks destroying the value that is in them, and is therefore economically risky as well as culturally barbarous.”
Bureaucratic Restlessness and Institutional Amnesia
One might ask why the Bank feels the need to engage in this visual revolution. The answer, in Rees-Mogg’s characteristically acerbic phrasing, is bureaucratic idleness. “It shows an organisation that is too stupid to know what its job involves, that is too well funded, as it clearly employs people who do not have enough to do.”
Bureaucracies expand to fill the space they occupy. Give someone the job of note redesign, and they will eventually propose a redesign whether or not the public wants one. Indeed, the very existence of a “banknote character advisory committee” betrays a kind of cultural decadence. A central bank worried about inflation would not be worrying about representation.
Rees-Mogg sees it as part of a wider institutional malaise. “The constant revolution at the Bank of England undermines confidence in the value of money, and confidence is its only value.” He is right. Fiat currency has no anchor except perception. Undermine the symbols – the monarchy, the consistency of design, the solemnity of language – and you do not simply modernise the note; you destabilise the very thing it is meant to represent.
The Role of Sovereignty and Symbolism in Currency
Historically, coins and notes have carried the imprimatur of sovereign power. From Alexander the Great to Elizabeth II, the ruler’s image has signified not just authority, but stability. The Queen’s portrait, added to British banknotes only in 1960, was a crucial symbolic gesture at a time when inflation began to erode real value. Her presence lent credibility where gold no longer could.
This was not accidental. As Rees-Mogg points out, “Monarchs have had their heads on coins, a practice believed to have started with Alexander the Great.” It was a political device, intended to reassure the user that the coin was more than a token, it was a sovereign guarantee.
This continuity has collapsed in recent years. The death of Queen Elizabeth II has seen her image swiftly replaced. In theory, this is understandable, Charles III is now monarch, but the haste with which the transition was carried out, combined with the simultaneous push for new note designs, has created a sense of aesthetic rootlessness. Currency, like a constitution, should not be tinkered with lightly.
The euro is a case in point. Its anonymous bridges and modernist blandness were chosen to avoid national controversy. The result is a currency that, while functional, inspires no emotional loyalty. By mimicking its sterility, the Bank of England risks adopting not just the look of the euro, but its lack of identity.
From Cultural Expression to Cultural Confusion
One cannot separate currency design from cultural confidence. In an era where national pride is often derided and heritage routinely deconstructed, the banknote becomes a battleground. Will it reflect the continuity of the nation, or its fragmentation? Will it embody sovereign strength, or the anxieties of an elite class desperate to appear inclusive?
Rees-Mogg’s warning is not just nostalgic, it is prescient. “Notes that have no real worth need to impress to maintain the fiction of value; this requires authoritative designs, but also continuity.” Without this continuity, we are left with what he calls “woke and boring” symbols, and that way, he concludes, “lies inflation.”
This is not an exaggeration. Public confidence in fiat currency is not inexhaustible. Already, interest in cryptocurrencies has surged, particularly among younger generations. To them, a decentralised, algorithmic currency holds more appeal than the politically correct pamphlet masquerading as a £10 note.
Conclusion: Preserve the Majesty, Preserve the Pound
The central lesson from Rees-Mogg’s critique is that currency design is not trivial, it is essential. In a fiat economy, money must look like money. It must speak of permanence, continuity, and cultural rootedness. A nation that cannot defend its own heritage on its currency is a nation that has lost confidence in itself.
We do not need banknotes that apologise for Britain’s past or showcase curated diversity. We need banknotes that command respect—both at home and abroad. We need monarchs, scientists, generals, and explorers. We need notes that reflect the grandeur of a country that once led the world.
If the Bank of England cannot understand this, if it insists on treating our currency as a vehicle for fashion rather than a symbol of permanence then it is not only “failing the nation,” as Rees-Mogg puts it, it is accelerating its decline.
In money, as in politics, perception is everything. Once the illusion vanishes, so too does the trust—and with it, the value. That is the real cost of ugly, woke, and forgettable banknotes.
Main Image: https://x.com/Jacob_Rees_Mogg/header_photo
