Why is Starmer ‘unsettled’ by a painting of Thatcher?

According to Keir Starmer’s hagiographer, Tom Baldwin, the new UK PM has had a portrait of Margaret Thatcher removed from No10 Downing Street because he found it ‘unsettling’.

Speaking at Glasgow’s Aye Write book festival this week, Baldwin said that he and Starmer were recently having a chat in Thatcher’s former study in No10 – presumably about what Starmer’s parents did for a living – when Baldwin’s eyes alighted on the big 2009 portrait of the former Tory leader hanging on the wall:

‘We sat there, and I go: “It’s a bit unsettling with her staring down at you like that, isn’t it?” Starmer replied yes and, when asked whether he would “get rid of it”, the prime minister nodded… And he has.’

So Britain’s new leader found himself so freaked out by a painting of a former, long-since deceased prime minister that he has ordered his minions to take it down.

This is more than a little weird, no? Granted, Robert Stone’s rendering of Maggie does look a little smug. But that hardly explains Starmer’s almost childish, hysterical reaction against it – albeit a reaction that was apparently prompted by Baldwin.

What’s going on? Why is Starmer, a man otherwise totally devoid of political passion and principle, seemingly so unnerved by a mere painting of an ex-PM?

The answer lies in the central role anti-Toryism plays on today’s establishment left. It is certainly the closest thing Starmer’s Labour has to an ideological core. After all, today’s Labour Party may not be for very much beyond technocratic authoritarianism, but it clings obsessively to what it believes itself to be against – namely, the ‘hateful’, ‘evil’ Tories. And there is no Tory more hated than the supposedly demonic figure of Margaret Thatcher herself.

Some 30-odd years after she left office, the former Tory PM is still viewed by many in Labour as the dark architect of Britain’s current moral and economic malaise. This is why Labour’s Deputy PM, Angela Rayner, feels licensed to call Tory ministers ‘scum’. Why middle-class lefties boast that they’ve ‘never kissed a Tory‘. Because in their eyes, the Tories are no mere political party, and Thatcher no mere politician. To Labour, they are forces of evil.

In many ways, the demonisation of Thatcher among Labourites is the mirror image of her sanctification in the Conservative Party. The right continue to hail her for unleashing Britain’s entrepreneurial spirits, while the left see her as a uniquely malevolent demiurge, ushering in a selfish, immoral culture.

Both overestimate her as both an individual and ideologue. Much of what is today called ‘Thatcherism’ was carried out all across the West, by centre-left and centre-right governments alike. State-owned assets were privatised, and the rights and influence of unionised labour were severely curtailed, in an attempt to preserve the capitalist system during a deep recession. And this settlement is one that Labour has shown no interest in upturning, beyond some tinkering around the edges of already eviscerated trade-union rights. If this thing they call ‘Thatcherism’ is really a unique, historic wrong, they have shown no signs of wanting to right it.

This pantomime rage against the long-since-departed Thatcher, then, acts as a substitute for political substance. There were few divides of any significance between Labour and the Tories at the last General Election. For all that Starmer fumes against the alleged malevolence of the last government, he has gladly doubled down on its core policies – from its economic agenda to its prurient nanny statism. On the rare occasions where differences do emerge, they have to be played up, blown out of all proportion and postured against relentlessly. Clearly, Starmer has started to buy into his own absurd caricature of the Tories and its former prime ministers.

Devoid of any substance, principles or vision for the country, hysterical anti-Toryism is all Starmer has left. No wonder that painting upset him so much.

Tim Black is a spiked columnist.