Thatcher’s portrait has been moved but Starmer lacks a big picture

At last: real change at the heart of Downing Street. With a hefty majority and riding high on the promise of ending the politics of populism, Sir Keir Starmer has delivered; shifting a portrait of Margaret Thatcher out of the Thatcher room in No 10 and into a different part of the same building.Yet beneath the jokes about where the former prime minister’s portrait might end up there is a serious question about what kind of change Starmer plans to deliver and whether it will amount to more than a rearranging of the furniture.
During the election campaign the Labour leader revelled in the pushback he got after praising Thatcher’s ability to effect “meaningful change” thanks to her sense of purpose, which ensured she didn’t “drift”. “You can distinguish political leaders, certainly in the postwar period, into those that had a plan and a sense of mission and those that drifted,” he told the BBC.
Yet despite Starmer’s repeated vow that his government would be “mission-led” and his warnings to voters that if they wanted change they had to vote for it, it’s still far from clear what “change” means to the PM.
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Labour’s manifesto was deliberately limited and cautious. Big ideas were watered down, plans scaled back or pledged without a specific timeline. Wes Streeting, now the health secretary, admitted he wanted to be more ambitious on social care, while billions due to be spent on green investment was scrapped.
The government’s approach to social care illustrates the problem. Since assuming power, Labour has dropped plans to cap costs for social care next year — a promise already delayed by the previous government — despite stating the NHS can’t be fixed until social care works properly. A royal commission has been suggested, despite reports by previous inquiries sitting largely ignored.
A promised investment in a new supercomputer in Edinburgh, which would have helped develop AI safety mechanisms and aided UK research more broadly, has been ditched. Experts have branded the move short-sighted and criticised the lack of long-term vision in an important and rapidly changing policy area.
In both cases, decisions seem to have been driven by the short-term need to cut costs, not by an alternative blueprint of the future. Yet for public sector pay, the prime minister found the extra money to stand up for traditional Labour values and respect union ties.
In many areas, it’s hard to see in what direction Labour intends to steer the UK. Is the best the country can hope for that everything will work just a bit better than it did under the Tories?
A more fundamental rethink than rearranging the furniture is needed. Without it, the prime minister risks allowing projects that require vision and commitment to be watered down by Treasury officials looking to make savings. Perhaps moving Thatcher’s portrait into his own study might be just the reminder the prime minister needs of the dangers of political drift.
Kate McCann is Times Radio’s political editor