Tony Blair's former spin doctor believes Keir Starmer having a portrait of Margaret Thatcher removed is "profoundly normal".

As first reported by The Herald, the Prime Minister is said to have found the painting of the former Conservative leader “unsettling.”

Speaking at an Aye Write event, Mr Starmer's biographer Tom Baldwin said the painting, which was commissioned by Gordon Brown in 2007 when she visited him for tea at No 10, a few months into his premiership, had been removed.

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Mr Starmer has faced a backlash for the decision, with Conservatives calling the move "petty".

However, Alastair Campbell, who was at the event, has defended the Prime Minister.

He wrote on social media: "A reminder that the official portrait of every former PM - even Johnson and Truss - is hung on the staircase leading from the Cabinet room to the State rooms.

"Being a Labour PM and not wanting a huge painting of Margaret Thatcher staring at you as you work strikes me as profoundly normal and the 'outrage' trivial and synthetic."

Sir Keir has previously praised Baroness 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.”