About half an hour in at the Aye Write book festival event on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer’s biographer, Tom Baldwin was trying to tell the Glasgow audience about how the new Prime Minister was trying to keep some connection to the real world.

“He can't be normal as Prime Minister,” he said. “Of course, he can't. Even wanting to be Prime Minister sets you apart from everyone else.”

But, he added, the Labour leader was not like his predecessors.

“Rather than putting gold wallpaper up, he's trying to get a cat flap installed,” Mr Baldwin said.

There was talk too of new kittens for Downing Street.

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“There's this other very nice story,” he said. “We’re sat in the garden and it starts raining so he carries a tray upstairs, past the pictures of prime ministers.”

The PM told Mr Baldwin they would go to a "place where we can go and have a quiet talk".

The quiet place was the study used by Mrs Thatcher during her time in No 10 and it’s where, in 2009, Gordon Brown hung a portrait of the former PM that he commissioned from royal artist Richard Stone.

Mr Baldwin said: "We sat there, and I go, 'It's a bit unsettling with her staring down at you like that, isn't it?'"

According to Mr Baldwin, Sir Keir replied: "Yeah." Asked by his biographer if he would "get rid of it", the Prime Minister allegedly nodded. Mr Baldwin added: "And he has."

The story, which first appeared in The Herald on Thursday morning, and which has been followed up by newspapers and broadcasters across the world, has sparked a furious backlash.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg described the decision as "petty-minded". He said it was also "unbecoming of a Prime Minister who has a role representing the nation, not just his political faction".

Baroness Arlene Foster, the former leader of the DUP, said was “unsettling” that the PM had removed a picture of the first female PM.

“He cannot deny her role in our nation - the most significant PM after Churchill. Not a good start from Labour, looks and feels vindictive and petty,” she said.

The UK’s - though not perhaps Scotland’s - view of Ms Thatcher remains divided. Her supporters, however, really like her. 

A YouGov poll in 2019 found that 21% of people in Britain believed she was Britain’s greatest post-war leader, ahead of Winston Churchill on 19% and Tony Blair, who came a distant third at 6%.

Some 44% said Mrs Thatcher was a good or great Prime Minister, compared to 29% who thought she was poor or terrible.

Perhaps the backlash would have been less furious if Sir Keir hadn’t just months ago seemingly praised Mrs Thatcher.

Last December, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Labour leader said Thatcher had “set loose our natural entrepreneurialism” during her time as Prime Minister.

“Across Britain, there are people who feel disillusioned, frustrated, angry, worried. Many of them have always voted Conservative but feel that their party has left them,” he said.

“I understand that. I saw that with my own party and acted to fix it. But I also understand that many will still be uncertain about Labour. I ask them to take a look at us again.”

But now he’s got their votes, maybe he doesn’t need to pander quite so much. Is this just Sir Keir’s latest u-turn?

When I wrote the story on Wednesday afternoon, I got in touch with Mr Stone, the painter. I was keen to hear what he thought. Would he be affronted? Outraged? 

Not at all. 

He wrote back to me yesterday: "When I was commissioned by the former prime minister Gordon Brown to paint the portrait of Margaret Thatcher, it was the first painted portrait of a prime minister to hang permanently at No 10.

"During the time that Gordon Brown was prime minister, the painting hung in a vestibule. It was only when David Cameron became PM that it was displayed in her old office.

"Pictures in any collection are often moved around and it comes as no surprise that my portrait of Margaret Thatcher has been relocated."

Maybe, sometimes, you just need to re-decorate.