The lady’s not for returning – but where has No 10’s Thatcher portrait gone?

Painting that hung in former PM’s study since 2009 no longer there – but aides are tightlipped as to whereabouts

In a summer punctuated by an election and then riots there has not really been a “silly season”, the traditional news-light period when holidaying MPs become worked up about trivialities. That is until now – thanks to a row about a portrait of Margaret Thatcher.

Margaret Thatcher standing next to a portrait of herself at 10 Downing Street, painted by artist Richard Stone, in 2009

What is known is that the slightly austere painting of the former prime minister by the artist Richard Stone has been moved from the Downing Street study where it had hung since 2009, when Gordon Brown commissioned it.

This one fact was enough to prompt front page stories in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, as well as apocalyptic responses from the likes of the former Tory minister John Redwood, who said it showed Keir Starmer “wants to drag Britain down”.

Meanwhile, Priti Patel, asked about Starmer’s decision at her Conservative leadership campaign launch, said: “I think it tells us everything really about his priorities. His priorities are not on serving the country, his priorities are literally just about tinkering at the margins.”

Somewhat more cryptically, the official Conservative X account posted a story about the painting with the words: “Tell me you’ve got a problem with women without telling me you’ve got a problem with women.”

What is going on? It does seem Starmer was responsible for the decision to remove the portrait. According to Tom Baldwin, the prime minister’s biographer, when they met in the room recently, Starmer agreed that the large, gilt-framed picture was “unsettling” and he was likely to take it down.

“And he has,” Baldwin told a literary event in Glasgow, comments initially reported by the Herald newspaper.

A No 10 source said the portrait was “not on the wall any longer” but declined to say where it had gone. Jacqui Smith, the Labour former cabinet minister, newly made a peer and a skills minister in the education department, told LBC it would remain in No 10, but again gave no details.

In one sense, such decorative reshuffling is entirely routine. New ministers are given access to the near 15,000-strong government art collection to decorate their offices, and a change of government almost always brings a change in what is hanging on the walls.

The Stone portrait is slightly different in that it was not acquired by the government art collection, rather, the £100,000 cost was paid for by an anonymous donor. The picture shows Thatcher at the height of her power in 1982, just after the Falklands war.

The location also has significance – Thatcher used the room as her study, and it is now known as the Thatcher room. Stone, speaking in 2009 as he completed the work, said he understood the portrait would “remain in Downing Street for ever”.

And so it may – just, and even if only for now, in a less prominent and perhaps less unsettling position.

Is Prince plotting?

Prince Harry and Prince William many years ago

Despite Prince Harry insisting that he’s no longer safe in the UK, he ‘secretly’ flies in for the memorial service of his uncle Robert Fellowes.

It has separately been confirmed that he will not add any more bile to the paperback edition of his memoir Spare – nor give any more hurtful interviews.

So, was Harry really paying tribute to a beloved uncle – or just trying to worm his way back into the Royal Family?

Meghan’s become just another pay-per-view plugger turning her high profile into high profit

Between not launching her lifestyle brand, not being invited to A-list events and not visiting the UK with her husband, where does Meghan find the time to be an international businesswoman, that is what I want to know.

This week, the Duchess of Sussex interrupted her trade and industry schedule to give an interview to the New York times. How unlike her, is what you are thinking, and I agree.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, speaks onstage at EAN University

Markle breached her ongoing quest for privacy, piercing that pearly shell of seclusion and confidentiality, to talk to one of the few publications in the world — along with People magazine, her trusty in-house trumpet — that she knows will treat her waffly pensées and latest commercial undertakings with respect and deference, rather than openly laugh in her face.

And so it came to be. the Duchess was promoting her ‘fashion portfolio’, which is not a posh way of saying ‘knicker drawer’ but rather the small collection of female-owned brands she has ‘invested in’ over the past few years.

One recent acquisition is Cesta Collective, which produces basket bags that are handwoven by ‘talented female artisans’ in Rwanda, finished in Italy and retail for about £700 each. For a straw basket, I find myself shrieking.

To be fair, the Mini Fan Bag is a snip at £556, but I’d still expect a fully thatched roof at that price, not something the size of a soup bowl into which you can slip a credit card and what is left of your common sense.

Meghan would not tell the newspaper how much she put into the brand, nor what ownership percentage she now has in the company, but Cesta confirmed it was a minority stake.

So I am guessing that it was sixpence, a free jar of jam and a signed photograph of the Duke and Duchess being presented with their Golden Grifters of 2024 award.

Why are we all here? I’ve lost my thread. Oh, yes – to salute Markle’s ‘ability to move merchandise’, a talent which was breathlessly admired by the NYT, as if the Duchess were a shiny fashion truck barrelling down the highway of hip.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly how she sees herself.

Back in 2017, on one of her first public events with Prince Harry, Markle carried a bag from the Scottish brand Strathberry – and it sold out online in 11 minutes. that ‘changed everything in terms of how I then looked at putting an outfit together,’ she said. I bet it did, darling!

However, the exiled Duchess has had to wait until now to fully monetise that regal power and fully invest in herself – while also helping struggling fashion brands establish themselves, of course. of course.

‘I support designers that I have really great friendships with, and smaller, up-and-coming brands that haven’t gotten the attention that they should be getting,’ she said.

Unknowns such Oscar de La Renta and Givenchy, along with StElla of McCartney and an obscure apprentice tailor from Milan called Mr G Armani, are all so grateful for her help. As, indeed, are Cesta.

When Markle was photographed with one of their bucket bags on a dinner date with Harry last year, sales rocketed. then, when she offered to become their first outside investor, I guess they had to say yes.

Yet Cesta hardly needed any help. vogue was writing about them as far back as 2018 and their celebrity-approved bags have been sold on luxury sites such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and net-a-Porter for years. It is not some struggling little brand desperate for a boost.

However, it is the kind of performative philanthropy business model that appeals to a global humanitarian such as Markle; someone who is always keen to burnish her caring credentials on a global stage and await the dutiful surge of admiration that follows.

The baskets are woven in Rwanda by women whom Cesta vaguely claims are paid ‘four to five times the average national salary’ which is around £170 per month.

If you factor in that the women get paid per basket and it takes three to five days to make each one, then by my rough calculation they receive about £113 per basket.

Wonderful if true, but it does put these part-time artisanal weavers on the same kind of salary scale as doctors and business executives in Kigali.

The degree of Cesta’s benevolence in Rwanda is ambiguous, but the bags are beautiful and the company has to be doing some good, right?

It is certainly the kind of good our Meghan wants to dock her dinghy of humanity alongside and scramble on board quicker than you can say ‘basket case’.

The Duchess also told the newspaper that, when it comes to being a businesswoman, she is a dolphin, not a shark.

And also that she is better than you, but you knew that already.

During the pandemic, you just scrolled through the internet, looking at pictures of dogs and cottages for sale in Wiltshire while drinking rose wine, didn’t you? Meghan, on the other hand, was busy, busy, busy scouring her screen for fashion brands she liked in the hope of coming to some sort of financial arrangement with them — and if she could dress it up as philanthropy, all the better.

When people are online looking for things or reading things, I’m trying to find great new designers, especially in different territories,’ the Duchess told the NYT.

Like all influencers – which is what she has become – Meghan always seems to be invested in the higher purpose of self-valourising while imposing her superior taste on the scabby masses for clicks and cash.

Look. Plenty of celebrities and even some royals get clothes and accessories for free – but that is not enough for the Sussexes. I imagine long Montecito nights of the soul when Meghan and Harry just burn with pure fury at the thought of anyone else, from handbag maker to napkin embroiderer to dress designer, making money out of them.

So perhaps it should be no surprise to anyone that she seems to be turning herself into just another pay-per-view professional plugger, a walking billboard in a perennial marketing campaign for herself, a duchess who has transmogrified her high profile into a high profit, with a price on everything from her ethical diamond earrings to the soles of her shoes.

the problem is that, collectively and individually, Harry and Meghan haven’t got any actual talent to monetise – all that is left to milk is the very fact of their celebrity itself.

For he is a prince who will never be crowned and she is an actress who will never get a part.

And it was always, always coming to this sad point.