It appears Sir Keir’s idolisation of Maggie Thatcher, always implausible, was short-lived.
After heaping the praise on Thatcher a mere six months ago, while he was trying to get elected, Starmer has U-turned again.
The PM’s own biographer has landed him in hot water, and sparked outrage amongst Tory MPs, after he revealed that Starmer has taken it upon himself to remove a £100,000 portrait of the Iron Lady from 10 Downing Street.
Speaking at an event at Glasgow Book Festival, Tom Baldwin, a former Labour senior advisor, claimed that the PM had admitted to him during a private meeting that he agreed with Baldwin’s assertion that the portrait of Thatcher was “unsettling”. When pressed on whether he would “get rid of it”, Starmer nodded, according to Baldwin, “and he has.”
In the run-up to the 4 July election, Starmer had been full of flattery for Thatcher, gushing in a Telegraph op-ed about her past success in “setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.”
Shortly afterwards in a BBC radio 4 Broadcasting House interview, he attempted to woo conservative voters once again, commending the late Maggie’s “sense of mission”, much to the outrage of the Labour left. The left-wing pressure group Momentum lambasted him for his “shift to the right, and a failure of Labour values.”
The PM is only reverting to his true colours. In a left-wing journal he himself founded in the 1980’s, Starmer slammed “the authoritarian onslaught of Thatcherism”.
The portrait of Thatcher had hung in her former study, unofficially referred to as “the Thatcher room” after her long spell in power. Commissioned by Gordon Brown months after he became PM in 2007, the painting had been viewed as a sign of bipartisan respect and an acknowledgement of her success. Painted by Richard Stone – a British artist renowned for his portraits of the Royal Family – and sponsored by an anonymous donor, it was the first portrait of a past leader to be commissioned by Downing Street.
When speaking about his artwork of Thatcher in 2019, Stone – who has also painted Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in addition to the Queen and Queen mother – said he hoped it would stay in Downing Street “forever”.
The decision to take down the painting, which reportedly remains in Number 10 but in a different gallery with other former leaders, has been criticised by leading Conservative members. Former Tory leader Ian Duncan Smith labelled it a “petty” gesture from Starmer to win over the “hard left”.
Priti Patel, who launched her bid today to be the next Tory leader, accused Starmer of spending more time removing portraits of “great, strong conservative female leaders” than governing.
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