Starmer’s historical illiteracy reveals the emptiness at the heart of Labour
Who says this Government failed to plan for power? It may not have worked out credible ideas to raise productivity, control immigration or provide energy, but it had “long planned”, said a spokesman, to move the paintings in Downing Street.
Stalin taught us to pay attention to visual disappearances. As the Soviet joke went: the future is clear, it is only the past that keeps changing.
Our Prime Minister is unnerved by a portrait of Margaret Thatcher. He is also disturbed by Mr Gladstone, who has been put into storage. Now Elizabeth I is banished from the beautiful drawing room where important visitors are received. Let us sympathise with Sir Keir: these three tower above ordinary politicians in ability, character and achievement.
How embarrassing for him to be meeting (let us say) President Zelensky with Elizabeth I looking on. Instead, there are now two brownish daubs by the fashionable Paula Rego, officially celebrating “strong and courageous women”. Queen Elizabeth and Mrs Thatcher are presumably the wrong sort of strong women.
As for Gladstone, his intellect, culture, ethical drive and sheer charisma dwarf nearly all politicians. Sir Keir reportedly does not read many books, so he might well be unsettled by a man who read 20,000 of them, including the Iliad (in Greek of course) 36 times.
Gladstone made a principled case for widening the electorate, condemned violence against women, demanded an ethical foreign policy, opposed predatory imperialism, and championed Irish home rule. Modern progressive politics based on moral fervour is largely his creation. He even pioneered identity politics, creating an alliance of religious dissenters and ethnic minorities against the British Establishment.
Nevertheless, today’s Left rejects him because although he condemned slavery, his father had been a slave owner, and the family received a good sum of taxpayers’ money when slavery was abolished. Removing his portrait is Starmer “taking the knee” again. It shows that the Labour Party, whether deliberately or just fecklessly, is happy to cut itself off from its own history, and the history of democracy in Britain.
No surprise then that so many people wonder what and who it represents.
The pictures in Downing Street are not just interior decoration or the reflection of an individual’s whims. As an official residence, it is a symbol. The portraits of prime ministers proclaim that despite differences of party, we are one nation. We are able to respect the achievements and good faith of opponents.
We accept the varying outcomes of elections and recognize the legitimacy of the people’s chosen governments. Hence the official language about “His Majesty’s Government” and his “Loyal Opposition”. This is – or was – the visual message to all who live and work in the building, and no less importantly to those who visit it.
Removing the majestic portrait of Elizabeth I from the principal state room proclaims a different message: that of national renunciation. To do so under the pretext of celebrating “strong and courageous women” shows either unbelievable ignorance or contempt for public intelligence.
Elizabeth ended persecution for beliefs (she refused to “make windows into men’s souls”) – perhaps this puts her on the wrong side of today’s progressives, though her stirring proto-feminist statement that despite having a female body she had the heart and stomach of a king would surely appeal to some of Starmer’s followers.
She kept the horrors of religious war at bay. Above all, she defended the country from foreign invasion. The simplest explanation for her disappearance is that this is again Starmer “taking the knee”, because Elizabeth – like practically every ruler in the world – was involved in slavery. Yes, slavery was alas universal. But that is not why we celebrate her and why her portrait hung in a place of honour.
Moving pictures around may not seem very important. But these pictures in these places are significant. They are another sign that this government, and the form of “progressive” politics today’s Labour Party espouses, instinctively cut themselves off from their own history and that of the nation.
Across the Western world, we see the same futile attempt to create an “anywhere” politics for “anywhere” people, fuelled by resentment and division. It is hard to imagine a British prime minister who would not want to show visitors the portrait of Elizabeth I. But that is precisely what we now have.