The left-wing Labour Party government in Britain should reinstate the public portrait of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to its place in 10 Downing Street, a petition has demanded.
Shortly after sweeping to power in 2024, then Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer promptly removed the portrait of the Iron Lady from the Thatcher Room, which served as her study in Number 10 while in office.
Starmer explained to the public that the decision was not mere petty politics, as his opponents claimed, but rather because he did not like “pictures of people staring down at me” while working and preferred paintings of landscapes instead. This was apparently not the case for Starmer’s Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who hung up a portrait of Communist Party of Great Britain co-founder Ellen Wilkinson weeks later in her own Downing Street rooms.
Regardless, with Starmer having been forced out of office after just over two years into his term, an opportunity has emerged for the portrait of Britain’s first female prime minister to be returned to its rightful place, the Margaret Thatcher Centre has argued. The charitable organisation dedicated to celebrating the legacy and values of Baroness Thatcher has organised a petition for the public to have their voice heard on the issue.
The petition calls for the Richard Stone portrait of the former Prime Minister, which depicted her shortly after the victory in the Falklands War, to be restored to the Thatcher Room in 10 Downing Street and for a standard to be set that portraits of former leaders are publicly displayed “as a matter of historical record,” rather than being up for removal “according to the preference of the incumbent”.
“Number 10 is not a private residence. It is the working seat of government and a building held in trust for the nation, in which the record of those who have faithfully served is properly displayed. The portraits that hang there are not endorsements of a programme. They are an acknowledgement of office, and of history. Gordon Brown understood this when he commissioned a painting of a Prime Minister drawn from the opposing party,” the centre argued.
“To remove the likeness of the first woman ever to lead this country from the room that bears her name is to treat our history as a matter of personal comfort. It sets a precedent by which any future occupant of Number 10 may quietly edit the record of those who came before. It also denies a new generation the sight of a woman who reached the highest office in the land at a time when no woman had done so before.”
Ireland’s Taoiseach Enda Kenny, right, talks with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron under a portrait of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at 10 Downing Street in London, Monday, April 18, 2011. AP Photo/Peter Macdiarmid, pool)
Beyond being Britain’s first female prime minister, the Centre noted that Baroness Thatcher held the office for longer than any other politician in the twentieth century.
During her tenure, the Centre said, she “led the country to victory in the Falklands, led this country to victory in the South Atlantic, restored its standing among the nations of the world, and gave millions of families the dignity of owning their own homes, and gave millions more a stake in the economic future of the country through privatisation.”
“She remains one of the towering figures of our national life,” the charity proclaimed.
Although recently installed Prime Minister Andy Burnham is not known to have the same aversion to portraiture as his predecessor, he has made opposition to Thatcherism a key plank of his public persona and policy platform.
Indeed, during his first address to the nation on Monday, Mr Burnham claimed that Britain’s current economic woes were the result of decisions made by the Thatcher government in the 1980s, rather than the slew of missteps by more recent prime ministers.
However, the Thatcher Centre noted that Burnham also professed a desire to make politics “work better” and to put an end to “point scoring”.
“Here is a modest but telling opportunity to do precisely that. Returning the portrait would cost the public purse nothing. It would require no legislation and no inquiry. It would simply affirm that the office of Prime Minister stands above the party that happens to hold it, and that the achievements of Baroness Thatcher belong to the nation rather than to a storeroom,” the charity said.
“We do not ask the Prime Minister to share her convictions. We ask him to honour the office she held with such distinction, and the history she made in holding it.”
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