Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial decision to take down Margaret Thatcher’s portrait in Downing Street confirms he is a ‘visceral Leftie’, Boris Johnson says today.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Mr Johnson says the Prime Minister’s ‘petty’ removal of the famous painting from Lady Thatcher’s former study shows he misled the public when he praised her during his election campaign.
The £100,000 artwork was commissioned to mark her achievements as Britain’s first female prime minister. No10 has offered no explanation, but his biographer Tom Baldwin said the Prime Minister found it ‘unsettling’.
Mr Johnson highlights Sir Keir’s attempt to court former Tory voters by praising Lady Thatcher’s success in releasing Britain’s ‘natural entrepreneurialism’.
He writes: ‘Britain’s first female Prime Minister has been banished from her own former office, and all because she gives Starmer the collywobbles.
Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to remove a portrait of Margaret Thatcher shows he is a ‘visceral Leftie’, Boris Johnson has said
No10 has offered no explanation as to why the picture was moved, but his biographer Tom Baldwin said the Prime Minister found it ‘unsettling’
‘We are entitled to ask: which is the real Starmer? Is he a Thatcher fan, or a visceral Leftie? The answer, my friends, is now clear: not just from his petty decision to remove her picture, but in everything he is doing in Government.’
The artist behind the work Richard Stone, yesterday said Sir Keir’s jittery reaction to it showed it had captured her ‘presence’.
But Mr Stone told the Daily Gazette newspaper he was ‘not disturbed or perturbed’ by it being moved. He even told BBC Radio 4 he takes it as ‘something of a compliment’.
But artist Richard Stone said that Sir Keir’s jitters showed the picture had captured Thatcher’s ‘presence’ and took its removal as ‘something of a compliment’
Mr Stone said if Sir Keir found it unsettling, ‘then I’d like to think that my portrait of Margaret Thatcher had a presence in that room’.
Tory former Cabinet minister Esther McVey said the painting removal showed ‘what a pathetic, petty minded little man Keir Starmer is’.
Skills minister Jacqui Smith defended her party leader. She told Sky News: ‘I don’t think whether or not you shift a portrait from one room to somewhere else is the most pressing issue of the day.’