Removal of Thatcher portrait 'not about her' - PM

Then-Tory Prime Minister David Cameron and Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny in front of the portrait in 2011

Sir Keir Starmer said his decision to remove a portrait of Margaret Thatcher from his study was not about her “at all”.

He told the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme he did not like to have pictures of anyone staring down at him while he worked.

Sir Keir said he preferred landscapes to portraits, before saying “there isn’t any politician staring at me in my study".

The prime minister's biographer Tom Baldwin revealed in August that the portrait of the Grantham-born former Tory PM had been moved and hung in a different part of No.10, which angered some conservative politicians.

Laura Kuenssberg interviews prime minister Sir Keir Starmer

The painting by Richard Stone, depicts Lady Thatcher just after the Falklands War in 1982.

It was commissioned in 2007 by former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and was hung in the study by David Cameron.

“I didn’t want a picture of anyone,” Sir Keir said. "This is my study… it’s my private place where I go to work. This is not actually about Margaret Thatcher at all."

He explained that when he was a lawyer people used to persuade him to have pictures of judges up on the wall.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “I don’t like images… and pictures of people staring down.”

“There isn’t any politician staring down at me where I work in my study, where I just get on with the work I need to get on with,” he explained.

“All I’ve got is pictures of the kids and the cats now."

However, he revealed he would make an exception to his portrait ban if it depicted one of his Arsenal football heroes: “I might tolerate a picture of Thierry Henry on the wall, but that’s about as far as I go.”

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