The British Museum has acquired two anti-Brexit “banknotes” created by activists to mock the Eurosceptic Conservative politicians Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The “skit money” or parody banknote showing the face of Mr Johnson, prime minister, is of the value of £350m, a reference to the discredited estimate by the Leave campaign of the weekly gains from departing the EU. “Promises, promises, promises” appears across one side of the note, mimicking the elaborate repeated lettering of a real banknote.

A 50-guinea note features a top-hatted picture of Mr Rees-Mogg, the leader of the House of Commons who, on the note, is nicknamed “the honourable member for the 18th century”. It is issued by the “Imperial Bank of Brexit”, with smaller lettering saying “I promise to pay myself more than you”. A scene of chaos and debauchery from Hogarth’s Gin Lane is used as a subtle background.

The notes were created last year by the activist group Bath for Europe and intended to be handed out on pro-EU demonstrations or printed out online by supporters.

© Dick Daniel/Trustees of the British Museum



Tom Hockenhull, curator of modern money at the British Museum, said he was given a wad of the notes earlier this year, and kept a pair for the museum’s collection while sending another to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, which also collects skit notes.

“We like acquiring skit notes because they tell you all sorts of things about society,” he said. “People often use banknotes for spreading political messages simply because if something lying on the ground looks like a banknote, you’re more likely to pick it up.”

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While the museum had seen plenty of notes and badges allied to the Remain cause, Mr Hockenhull said they had yet to come across any pro-Brexit notes, and appealed for members of the public to send them in if they existed. “If there are any, we’ve got to acquire them because we want both sides of the story, not just the 48 per cent. We would be more than willing to acquire them for the collection.”

There is a lively history of skit notes going back to the 18th century, when the satirist George Cruikshank engraved a bank note featuring a row of bodies hanging from the gallows, in protest at the brutal capital punishment meted out to women forgers of £1 notes.

During the second world war, German forces dropped propaganda notes on to British forces in north Africa, with messages suggesting sterling was worthless. In the cold war, émigrés from the Soviet Union who supported the west used balloons to drop skit notes over eastern Europe.