Rishi Sunak hid his admiration for an unlikely political hero - a tax-raising Labour chancellor

Part of the Gaitskell portrait is visible in a Jan 2021 photograph of Mr Sunak speaking on the phone to Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary – SIMON WALKER/HM TREASURY

During his time at the Treasury, Rishi Sunak trumpeted his decision to place a portrait of Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s tax-cutting chancellor, behind his desk in No 11 Downing Street.

Now, it has emerged that the portrait of another of his predecessors hung on the same wall with rather less fanfare: the tax-raising Labour chancellor Hugh Gaitskell.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is not difficult to see how the ambitious former chancellor might have drawn inspiration from a fellow alumnus of Winchester College who went on to lead his party, having also served at the helm of the Treasury.

In fact, the picture of Gaitskell that he chose for his office in No 11 was taken the day after the former chancellor became Labour leader, and he is seen beaming at the camera. At the time, Gaitskell’s rise to become leader after only 10 years as an MP, was seen as meteoric, not unlike Mr Sunak becoming Prime Minister in autumn 2022 after just seven years in Parliament.

However, during Mr Sunak’s tenure as chancellor, the portrait raised eyebrows among some of his colleagues given that Gaitskell’s brief stint at the Treasury between 1950 and 1951 saw a tax-raising budget that would send shivers down the spines of today’s jittery Conservative MPs.

Hugh Gaitskell, who had a similar rapid career path to Rishi Sunak’s own, on the day he became Labour leader – KEYSTONE PRESS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Perhaps for this reason, it appears in very few of the photographs of Mr Sunak in action that emanated from his Treasury team during his time as chancellor. When Mr Sunak tweeted a picture of himself standing next to the Lawson portrait, the separate portrait of his Labour predecessor was out of shot.

It can, however, be seen in the background of a picture Mr Sunak posted in June 2021 showing Nova, the Labrador retriever he had just acquired for his daughters, sitting on his lap.

As Chancellor, Mr Sunak announced controversial plans to increase National Insurance to fund a mammoth increase in health and social care spending demanded by Boris Johnson.

Lawson still hangs on wall

Kwasi Kwarteng, who was business secretary under Boris Johnson, is understood to have had the Gaitskell portrait unceremoniously removed and placed in a storage room during his brief tenure in No 11 during Liz Truss’s premiership last year, which was centred on a plan to boost growth by cutting taxes.

Today, Lawson still hangs on the wall in No 11 behind the desk now occupied by Jeremy Hunt, who was originally appointed by Ms Truss to replace Mr Kwarteng.

Gaitskell, however, is still confined to a storage room, perhaps hopeful for a Labour victory at the next election, given that Rachel Reeves, Mr Hunt’s opposite number, has compared herself to the 1950s chancellor.

The photograph of Nigel Lawson, famous for his tax cutting as chancellor, still hangs on Jeremy Hunt’s wall in No11

Gaitskell, a former academic and civil servant, was chancellor under Clement Attlee and served as Labour’s shadow chancellor for four years following the party’s 1951 election defeat. He then beat Aneurin Bevan to become Labour leader in 1955, serving until his premature death in 1963, aged 56.

Each new minister is asked by the official Government Art Collection about the type of works they would like displayed in their offices.

When he became Prime Minister, Mr Sunak is understood to have requested a mix of older and contemporary British art, including an item relating to his constituency of Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Sunak’s eclectic art mixture

The artwork in his study in No 10 includes an 18th-century coloured engraving entitled The South West Prospect of Richmond, in the County of York, and a modern oil painting called Poetic Feet, by Tunjo Adeniyi Jones, a British-born artist whose work is inspired by his west African heritage. Mr Sunak also inherited a portrait of Winston Churchill from his predecessors.

Hanging in the Prime Minister’s outer office is a work by Chila Kumari Burma, a British Hindu artist whose parents emigrated to the UK.

It depicts holidaymakers queuing up beside an ice cream van with a cut-out Bengal tiger – the symbol of the artist’s father’s ice cream business – on its roof. The image is transposed over an enlarged £10 bank note.

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