Keir Starmer is really not keen on a portrait of the former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher hanging in No. 10 Downing Street—so much so that he has apparently removed the picture from the walls of his residence.
According to The Guardian, Starmer’s biographer, Tom Baldwin, told visitors to Glasgow’s Aye Write book festival about a recent meeting with Starmer in Thatcher’s former study where the painting was housed. Baldwin said: “We sat there, and I go: ‘It’s a bit unsettling with her staring down as you like that, isn’t it?’” Starmer replied yes and, when asked whether he would “get rid of it”, the prime minister nodded, said Baldwin. The biographer insists that the Thatcher painting hangs no more in Downing Street.
The portrait of Thatcher, painted by Richard Stone, was commissioned by the former prime minister Gordon Brown and unveiled at a private reception in 2009. We reached out to Stone, who noted that pictures in any collection are often moved, and that it “comes as no surprise that my portrait of Margaret Thatcher has been relocated”. No. 10 meanwhile said they had "nothing further to add"—and yet still the plot thickens.
Earlier today (30 August) Baroness Jacqui Smith told LBC radio that "pictures of Margaret Thatcher will remain in No 10". Whether her assertion will be enough to lower the many eyebrows still being raised at both the apparent brutal take down the fact that a titan of the Labour Party commissioned the work in the first place, remains to be seen...
UPDATE (3 September): According to The Telegraph, the portrait of Thatcher has been moved to a first-floor meeting room at No. 10 Downing Street.