THE ORIGINAL TDS RETURNS: Why is Starmer ‘unsettled’ by a painting of Thatcher?

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.

Every BBC historical retrospective, on any topic, invariably devolves into rote Thatcher-bashing once the ‘80s is brought up. Or as Peter Hitchens wrote in The Abolition of Britain:

Since the 1960s, when the Left began its conquest of the cultural battlements, it has always been surprised and annoyed by Tory election victories. The 1970 Tory triumph, though entirely predictable, took the cultural establishment by surprise. The 1979 Tory win, though even more predictable, infuriated them. They had won control of broadcasting, of the schools, of the universities, the church, the artistic, musical and architectural establishment? How was it possible that they could not also be the government? Their rage was enormous, and increased with each successive Labour defeat. It was an injustice. How could the people be so foolish? Now, instead of aristocratic snobs misgoverning the country, the establishment was portrayed as a sort of fascistic semi-dictatorship, hacking at the NHS and the welfare state, waging aggressive wars abroad and enriching itself while the poor lived in misery.

See also: American left’s reaction whenever a president with an (R) after his name takes office.