Brexit 50p: Activists threaten boycott as treasury draws up plans for millions to enter circulation
Prospective Lib Dem MP says she would return the coinage to the bank 'and ask them to swap it for a proper one'
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Your support makes all the difference.Anti-Brexit activists have threatened to boycott a 50 pence piece that is set to mark the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, amid reports the Treasury intends to produce millions of the coins in time for 31 October.
Embossed with the phrase “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations” above the date Brexit will begin, the coin was originally due to be introduced under former chancellor Philip Hammond – who had planned to mint about 10,000 and sell them to collectors for £10 each.
However his successor, Sajid Javid, is now said to be looking at minting millions in time for Brexit. In plans reported by The Sunday Telegraph, a source said the chancellor was looking to go beyond having the coinage as collector’s items “so that everyone gets a coin and it is not just a tribal thing that some people buy”.
But some have vowed to rid themselves of the coin if it turns up in their change. Eleanor Rylance, a Liberal Democrat councillor for Broadclyst and the party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the East Devon seat, called for people to send the coins back as a form of protest.
“I intend to take every ‘Brexit 50p’ that falls into my hands into a bank and ask them to swap it for a proper one,” she wrote on Twitter in a statement other activists have echoed. “I shall refuse to take them in change.”
She added: “If enough of us do it, it will be a productivity drain and akin to a strike without striking. Plus we should not be normalising this right-wing coup.
“This, yet again, has all the hallmarks of dictatorship. They’ll be planning huge, overawing buildings to scare us with next.”
Ms Rylance, 51, told The Independent she had been subjected to a range of misogynistic abuse from Brexit supporters since arguing for the action, adding: “I seem to have struck a nerve, hence their really disproportionate response.
“It’s an entirely legal, mildly disruptive form of protest anyone can do moderately privately. Hopefully businesses will react if enough people take up the protest. To my mind, it’s another signal to send to the government that they most certainly do not have full support - nor will their attempt at brainwashing us into submission over Brexit succeed”.
It is currently unclear if the coins will be disseminated in time for the day Britain leaves the EU.
New coins have to be approved by the Queen’s Privy Council, which is not slated to meet until October.
If the coin is minted it will join a line of EU-inspired coinage in the UK – including one when the nation joined the European Economic Community in 1973, and another when the UK held the presidency of the Council of the European Union in 1998.
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