Starmer rehomes ‘unsettling’ Thatcher painting

To Downing Street, where a painting of a former prime minister has been causing quite a stir lately. Sir Keir Starmer found himself at loggerheads with a number of Conservative politicians last week when it transpired the Labour PM had removed a portrait of Margaret Thatcher from the former No. 10 study – after he’d agreed the Gordon Brown-commissioned painting was ‘a bit unsettling’. While Starmer was slammed for his ‘petty approach’ by Tory politicians, it now turns out that the portrait has found a new home – in a first floor visitor meeting room. Talk about a downgrade…

The revelation – which emerged during an interview with Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin at Glasgow’s Aye Write book festival – has continued to attract criticism from Sir Keir’s rivals, however. Ex-Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg blasting the PM’s ‘spiteful’ decision. ‘The portrait should be returned to its rightful place in the study where she worked.