By their deeds shall ye know them. So reads the Gospel of Matthew, a timeless admonition against the perils of hypocrisy. Nowhere is this warning more appropriate than the corridors of Westminster, where words are endlessly polished and poses for the camera struck. Yet in the end it is always deeds, not words that unmask the soul. It is in this light that we should re-evaluate the Starmer regime: a government which proclaims its devotion to Britain while quietly taking a wrecking ball to the very foundations of our national inheritance.
The purge began late last year. Shortly after assuming office, Prime Minister Starmer ordered the removal of many historical portraits from Number 10: including Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady who broke the post-war consensus; Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen who forged England into a Protestant great power; Sir Walter Raleigh who planted the first seeds of England’s empire; and William Gladstone, the towering Victorian statesman. In the face of public anger, Starmer’s explanation was flimsy to say the least:
“This is not actually about Margaret Thatcher at all. I don’t like images and pictures of people staring down at me. I’ve found it all my life. When I was a lawyer I used to have pictures of judges. I don’t like it. I like landscapes. This is my study, it is my private place where I go to work. I didn’t want a picture of anyone.”
Perhaps his excuse would have carried more weight, had Starmer replaced the artwork with actual landscapes. Instead, he chose to feature the work of the Portuguese artist, Paula Rego, which explicitly features women staring down at him. Rego’s oeuvre is renowned for focussing on ‘strong and courageous women’ – clearly company Starmer did not believe the grocer’s daughter was fit for.
The more likely explanation is that these hallowed pillars of Britain’s past were removed (Thatcher aside) for their purported links to the slave trade and Empire; taints that, in the Starmerite calculus, render them unfit for modern eyes.
The cull continued in earnest in the spring of this year, with further great British figures excised across Whitehall and Westminster, and the space quickly filled with ‘woke’ art. Those selected for the chop include William Shakespeare, whose quill immortalised the very cadences of the English soul; Winston Churchill, the bulldog who defied Naziism; Admiral Nelson, whose triumphs secured England’s naval supremacy; and the Duke of Wellington, who vanquished Napoleon. It is impossible to ignore the systematic supplanting of greatness by mediocrity. In one particularly grotesque twist, Nelson’s place was usurped not by another naval luminary, but by a portrait of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. Clearly ego as well as ideology is behind such iconoclasm.
Alas, the desecration shows no sign of slowing. Only last month, it was revealed that Foreign Secretary David Lammy had conducted his own bit of spring cleaning at the Foreign Office. Shockingly, Lammy saw fit to remove the portrait of her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, a symbol of service, dignity and quiet sovereignty that had graced the walls for decades; it is believed her Majesty’s portrait now lies in storage What did Lammy consider appropriate to put in her stead? Two variations of the Pan-African flag, created by artist Larry Achiampong – a nod to borderless cosmopolitanism and a slap in the face to national pride.
These acts are not isolated lapses of judgement, but part of a broader Labour obsession with ‘dealing with’ the ‘white male oppressors’ who populate our historical pantheon. Take the case of Camden Council, a Labour stronghold in north London, which in October 2025 unveiled a ‘best practice toolkit’ for interrogating public memorials. The guide targets statues and plaques of figures from ‘white, male-dominated spheres’ who might harbour ‘prejudiced views on ethnicity, faith, gender, disability or sexuality’. The toolkit has been shared with other bodies across Britain and Europe. Without shame, it echoes Welsh Labour’s 2023 edict to box, conceal or destroy statues of ‘old white men’ like Wellington and Nelson, in pursuit of an ‘anti-racist’ agenda. Again, it is hard to conclude that this is anything other than an overt airbrushing of Britain’s imperial legacy; cultural euthanasia, without the patient’s consent.
What exactly lies behind this revisionist zeal? At heart, it appears to be the hatred of Britain – not the abstract ideal, but the flesh-and-blood nation forged by ‘oppressors’ whose boots the entire Labour front-bench would be unfit to lace. Starmer et al appear to see our past, not as a tapestry of triumphs and tribulations, but as a ledger of unpaid debts to be settled through ritual humiliation – no doubt if he could, Starmer would have the entire nation on its knees in perpetuity for BLM, and a myriad of other charlatan causes. In a country where genuine expressions of national pride – flying the Union Jack, singing ‘Rule Britannia’ or rising for the National Anthem – are dismissed as ‘jingoistic’, ‘Little Englander’ or outright ‘racist’, such purges find fertile soil.
It is small wonder that a 2024 YouGov poll found only one in three Britons are proud of the British Empire – the lowest in decades, and a statistic Labour’s icon-smashing only exacerbates.
The hypocrisy of this Labour administration is off the scale. For it is precisely these turncoats who don the mantle of Britishness, whenever they feel the electorate demands it. Tune into their stump speeches, and you will see the rhetoric flow like treacle. “I am proud of Britain” intones Starmer through gritted teeth; “I wear the flag very proudly… that’s how I see my Britishness” claims David Lammy; “We are proud to be British, proud of our values and we know what our flag really means” feigns Yvette Cooper, while classifying Nigel Farage as a ‘plastic patriot’. These are not slips of the tongue but calculated performances, trotted out to soothe the party faithful. When facing Red Wall voters, the flag becomes a prop; in the quiet of Whitehall, it is furled away in lieu of something more ‘inclusive’.
Starmer’s sanctimonious ‘national renewal’ is nothing but a smash-and-grab raid on Britain’s soul. Our nation is not a tabula rasa for ideological experiments; it is a continuum, where Elizabeth I’s defiance informs Churchill’s resolve, and Nelson’s daring echoes in the Falklands. To ‘decolonize’ this lineage is to orphan the present, leaving us adrift on a sea of imported symbols and sanitised narratives. Labour’s war on our history is, in truth, a war on us – every quiet Englishman nursing a pint in a pub garden, every Scot reciting Burns, and every Welsh voice raised in the chapel.
By their deeds shall ye know them, certainly. But by their symbols too – and this government’s symbols have only one thing in common – they are not British.
Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West and The Frank Report, which you should probably subscribe to.
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This piece was first published in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.
(Photograph: Yousuf Karsh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
