UK: Keir Starmer removes a portrait of Margaret Thatcher from the prime minister's residence
The British premier agreed with his biographer that the painting was "unsettling," the latter recounted.
Keir Starmer, prime minister of the United Kingdom.
The brand-new British prime minister, Keir Starmer, removed a painting of ex-premier Margaret Thatcher (1925 - 2013) from the official residence. This was revealed this week by Starmer's biographer, Tom Baldwin, at a literature festival in Glasgow, Scotland.
According to Baldwin, the "very nice story" occurred when the two wanted a quiet place to talk and went to a room informally called "Thatcher's Room" because it had a portrait of the former leader commissioned from royal artist Richard Stone and hung by Gordon Brown in 2009. It was the room Thatcher used as a study, according to local media.
"We sat there, and I go, 'It's a bit unsettling with her staring down at you like that, isn't it?,'" Baldwin recalled telling Starmer. The Labor minister agreed and pledged to remove the painting. "And he has," Baldwin said.
The news sparked criticism in the U.K., particularly from Conservatives. "It's disgraceful that Keir Starmer would remove a picture of Britain's first female Prime Minister," Meghan Gallacher, deputy chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party, argued in conversation with The Telegraph. "Regardless of your opinions on Margaret Thatcher, she paved the way for women in politics and tackled sexist stereotypes head on."
"It seems like a churlish move, but perhaps Sir Keir Starmer was intimidated by the gaze of a world-renowned leader whose achievements he will never come close to matching," argued Scottish Conservative Murdo Fraser. Conservative MP Esther McVey expressed herself in similar terms:
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