Portraits of Margaret Thatcher will stay on display in 10 Downing Street, a Labour minister insisted on Friday after Sir Keir Starmer reportedly asked for one to be moved because he found it “unsettling”.
The claim, made by the new Prime Minister’s biographer, has triggered outrage among Conservatives but was downplayed by education minister Baroness Jacqui Smith.
She said on Sky News that “moving portraits from one room to somewhere else” was not the most pressing issue facing Britain, after the row made the front pages of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.
On LBC, Lady Smith added: “There were several times I was unsettled in No 10 but it wasn’t usually by the portraits, I have to say.
“Keir Starmer, can’t win, can he? A few months ago, people were having a go at him because he said he thought he could learn from the leadership of Margaret Thatcher.”
The former Home Secretary stressed: “Pictures of Margaret Thatcher will remain in No10.
“You can take that as a Jacqui pledge, but I think probably Keir Starmer is more concerned about actually sort of cracking on with the job of getting the country to work properly than where the pictures are.”
Downing Street refused to comment on the claim made by biographer Tom Baldwin, who was speaking at a book festival in Glasgow about the Thatcher portrait commissioned by former Labour PM Gordon Brown.
According to Glasgow's Herald newspaper, Mr Baldwin said Sir Keir had told him the so-called Thatcher Room in No10 was a "place where we can go and have a quiet talk".
Mr Baldwin told the audience: "We sat there, and I go: 'It's a bit unsettling with her staring down at you like that, isn't it?'"
He said that Sir Keir agreed and nodded when asked if would "get rid of" the portrait. Mr Baldwin added: "And he has."
In response, outspoken former “common sense minister” Esther McVey accused Sir Keir of being “a pathetic, petty minded little man”. She tweeted: “Maybe he doesn’t want to be reminded of a towering politician he could never live up to.”
Ms McVey was embroiled in a row of her own after likening reported plans by Sir Keir to ban smoking in pub gardens to the Nazi Holocaust.
Meghan Gallacher, who is running to be leader of the Scottish Tories, said in the Telegraph: “It’s disgraceful that Keir Starmer would remove a picture of Britain’s first female Prime Minister.
“Regardless of your opinions on Margaret Thatcher, she paved the way for women in politics and tackled sexist stereotypes head on.”
However, Sir Keir is on record as recognising the consequential nature of Mrs Thatcher’s premiership - much to the annoyance of the Labour Left.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph last December, he praised her for bringing about "meaningful change" in British politics and said: "Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism."
