Margaret Thatcher liked to get hands-on with the cleaning. Cherie Blair called it a ‘goldfish bowl’. Boris Johnson left the place looking like ‘a student digs’. Alice Thomson on what the Starmers can expect at No 10.
So, Vic, now you can answer the big question: is Downing Street a “soulless cage — with fleas”, as Liz Truss recently suggested, or “a gorgeous family home”, as depicted by Akshata Murty? It is clear the Starmer family have spent more time debating whether they will move into No 10 — and indeed whether they can still get Deliveroo — than any political issue.
For the past few weeks, the Sunaks have been quietly shifting their possessions back to their £7 million ($15m) pad in Kensington. First the dog and her dog bowl, next the Peloton, coffee machine and finally the children’s duvets, though not the umbrella just in case it rained on Rishi’s final speech. John and Norma Major did the same before the 1997 election, to avoid the sight of a removal van in the famous street after the election.
Meanwhile, the Starmers have been avoiding packing up their home in Kentish Town. Their 16-year-old son has only just finished his GCSEs while their 13-year-old daughter has been adamant that she doesn’t want to move, although Starmer has hinted that she might be bribed with a dog. Downing Street loves a pooch as long as it doesn’t pee on the sofas like the Johnsons’ Dilyn or chase Larry, the resident cat. Jojo, the Starmers’ own cat, is another headache; she may insist on staying in NW5. There have been two labradors: the Sunaks’ Nova and the Hunts’ Poppy, who have had to be restrained from rounding up the pelicans in St James’s Park. Top choice for the Starmers at the moment is a German shepherd, although they may want something calmer in a flat.
Cherie Blair dubbed Downing Street the “goldfish bowl”. Carrie Johnson called it a “prison”, but Nancy Cameron enjoyed her childhood there so much she asked her father to arrange a nostalgic visit to look at the view from her old bedroom window.
The Starmers have tried to find a way to avoid moving the family to Westminster where they will be woken by the military bands practising outside on Horse Guards Parade. Lady Starmer, who likes to be known as Vic, is used to walking to the hospital where she works in occupational therapy. Their two children don’t want to commute miles each day by Tube and bus or, worse, be chauffeured to their secondary school. But the family have been told that, for security reasons, if they remained in their house they would need barriers at the end of the road, round-the-clock police presence and security cameras everywhere.
They decided it was unfair on the neighbours. So Vic really will have to buy her husband a new wallet — the last one she gave him was engraved with “Take me home to Kentish Town”.
It is more convenient to live over the shop. Rishi Sunak said he could pop up to make their bed after morning meetings. David Cameron would de-nit the children at bath time to relax before a drinks party with donors. Gordon Brown had a train set installed in his office for his two sons. Tony Blair told me he saw more of his children when he was in power than in opposition — almost too much when his youngest, Leo, was born and he was expected to go upstairs to change nappies.
Keir Starmer, who had never even looked round the flats above Downing Street until the start of July, has made it clear he dislikes grandeur, but Blair says that after a few years living in what William Pitt referred to as “this vast awkward house”, he found it reassuring to be surrounded by the ghosts of his predecessors, their portraits and photographs lining the staircase, their eyes following him.
Downing Street has been the home of every prime minister since 1735, having been designed by Sir Christopher Wren and overseen by the rapacious property developer Sir George Downing (not sure Starmer will be thrilled about that). In 1957, when civil servants realised Britain’s most famous house was sinking, they added concrete underpinnings, but it has barely been touched since. It needs a complete makeover, but no one dares spend the money. Even Boris Johnson just papered over the cracks with expensive wallpaper. Brown was told that the building works would take at least four years while everyone decamped to rental accommodation. In Liz Truss’s case, she lasted only 49 days so they hadn’t even delivered her new furniture. “We ordered some of our own but were evicted before it could be delivered,” she said. No prime minister wants to camp out when they could be thrown out before they get to live in this “dingy and decaying” home, as Benjamin Disraeli described it in 1868.
He persuaded the state to pay for renovation of the public rooms and funded the refurbishment of the bedrooms himself, installing a bath with hot and cold water for £150 3s 6d. William Gladstone spent £1,555 5s on furniture and added lighting and telephones. During the Second World War, Winston Churchill moved to the nearby war rooms and in 1946 Downing Street was gutted and refurbished at vast cost, nearly £1m ($2.1m). From then on each prime minister was given a maintenance grant, which is now £30,000 ($64,000) a year, a paltry sum, according to Johnson.
Margaret Thatcher did the next big refurb. She asked the architect Quinlan Terry to redo the state drawing rooms with the mouldings depicting a rose, thistle, daffodil and shamrock. Blair added six bees for the six Blairs.
Most prime ministers now end up loving the space of the state rooms, which are all theirs when the staff have left for the day. Just watch Love Actually, one of the Sunaks’ favourite rom-coms. Murty told me that she and Rishi were determined to dance round them before they left, singing Jump (For My Love).
Even better is the front door that only opens from the inside and is never locked, so you don’t need to fumble for your keys. Once briefly green, it has almost always been black with a wonky zero.
Downing Street is remarkably secure. In 1991 when the mortar bomb fired by the Provisional IRA exploded near the back of the house, it merely rocked the cabinet meeting Major was taking; he managed to continue. The nuclear bunker is another novelty for the children. Frances Osborne, who lived in the buildings with her two children, Luke and Liberty, when her former husband, George, was chancellor, said, “They loved the security control room with all the monitors.”
Then there is the gorgeous garden, which used to be off limits for family but was turned into a playground for Blair’s offspring until Johnson’s staff broke the swing during lockdown.
Dignitaries and celebrities are invited into the state rooms and garden but few enter the flats in the attic, which are designed to be family homes.
Thatcher was a manic cleaner. Dusting the flat and ironing her husband’s shirts helped her to think and she made endless fish pies and coronation chicken for her closest ministers when she was stressed at times such as the Falklands crisis. Bernard Ingham, her press secretary, once told me that she would run her finger along the bookcase before a foreign visit to check for dust. She offered to buy her own ironing board for £19 ($40) after entering Downing Street, according to the National Archives.
Norma Major preferred to leave the fish pie in the freezer for John and drive herself to the constituency in Huntingdon. She disliked being in Westminster, which she found soulless. Their teenage son, James, remained at their old home in the country so he could stay at his school.
Blair was the first prime minister to move into the more spacious flat in No 11, shifting Gordon Brown into the smaller No 10 quarters. When the family arrived, one aide explained that, “It was full of the fug of chancellor Kenneth Clarke’s cigar smoke and looked like a jazz club. The furniture was heavy and brown. There was no shower and the toilets were considered unfit for the Clintons’ state visit.”
The Starmers must decide whether to change the interiors. When the Camerons moved into No 11, Samantha installed a new kitchen, a £3,400 ($7,300) Britannia range cooker, floating shelves, seagrass matting, a Dualit toaster and a yellow sofa. The Camerons moved in just after Florence, their youngest child, was born, once the decoration was complete.
Theresa May introduced beige walls, a red sofa, cushions and candles: the “John Lewis nightmare”, as Carrie Johnson called it. Once Boris secured his 80-seat majority in 2019, the Johnsons asked Lulu Lytle of Soane to redecorate. Lytle said she received a cold call from Carrie, who liked the fabric commissioned by the Mays for the state bedrooms at Chequers and her use of English craftspeople.
The Sunaks, who chose to keep the smaller flat, went for grey marl carpets, marble coffee tables and bouclé armchairs. The Starmers, I suspect, are not interested in interior design. They will invite friends for Friday night Shabbat or watch their favourite sitcom, Friday Night Dinner, together.
Some prime ministers don’t mind filling their private quarters with staff. Harold Wilson’s wife recalled waking up at 3am to find a secretary in the bedroom taking dictation. Norma Major remembers waking at dawn to discover officials at the end of the bed and Cherie Blair warns that “officials can just come in and walk out at all hours of the night, so don’t sleep naked”. Carrie Johnson used to find it infuriating that Boris invited his advisers upstairs from 4pm onwards to drink wine and eat takeaway pizza, particularly after she had her second child, Romy, and her toddler, Wilfred. Johnson trashed the flat. “It looked like a student digs,” one friend said. The cleaners were constantly emptying wastepaper baskets. Sue Gray was horrified when she saw it. Victoria Starmer has already banned advisers from their Kentish Park home, so she is unlikely to allow them to drift into her kitchen, let alone the bedroom.
The crowds waved the Starmers into their new home as the sun shone, but once the removal vans have left Downing Street they will realise how isolated life can be in Westminster surrounded by 100 staff. They may also miss their local pub, the Pineapple. “Downing Street the building is run by a lovely, kind team who go out of their way to make family life as normal as possible and make sure it isn’t a gilded cage,” says one of the Camerons’ aides. The Cameron family loved the bacon butties in the staff canteen (the vegetarian Vic and her vegan daughter may veto these) and Florence would wander the floors as a toddler being given treats by everyone. But Cherie Blair felt so lonely she would invite her gym instructor, Carole Caplin, who became a confidante, up to the flat. Caplin provided wardrobe advice, applied Cherie’s make-up and gave Tony reiki massages until the press found out. “She was non-political and helped me out three times a week, training at the gym and having girlie chats,” Cherie says, still bewildered by the backlash after a picture of her and Carole lying on the bed in Downing Street was released.
When Truss moved in for her 49 days in Downing Street, she explained in her book, Ten Years to Save the West, that her husband couldn’t even get an Ocado delivery. “He had to convince Ocado it wasn’t a hoax.” It was then delivered to officials, who had no idea what to do with it. “I’m not sure it would be rated well on Airbnb,” she wrote. “It was surprisingly spacious, though it felt a bit soulless.” The Johnsons had taken their furniture with them, so the civil servants had scrabbled around for items from various offices. It was also very noisy, Truss said. “There was an almost constant backdrop of chanting and shouting through megaphones from protesters camped out on Whitehall.”
Spontaneous excursions are all but impossible. “If I insisted on going for a run or a walk, arrangements were made for me to be driven to a quiet bit of Hyde Park — but even this felt like being allowed out into the prison exercise yard,” Truss complained in her book. “As a way of life, the experience was intensely claustrophobic. The system does a very good job of keeping outsiders at bay.”
Her daughters, Frances and Liberty, moved in aged 14 and 16, just before the start of the autumn term. “I saw quite a lot of them, but we never had time to talk about what a massive life change it was. They had to keep running errands for me because it was easier for them to leave the buildings without being spotted.” She also had to organise her own hair and make-up.
There have been 17 children in Downing Street whose parents were prime ministers. Two were babies. As Starmer has noted, it is far easier when you’re under 10 and can have fun rollerskating round the state rooms. For teenagers, it’s hard. He decided not to talk to the children of previous prime ministers in case they didn’t have a good experience, saying, “I thought that would reinforce a concern for our children.” Starmer says he is determined to keep playing five-a-side football each week. He will be driven by his security team and find red lights miraculously turn green for him. Blair never drove his own car as prime minister. The Starmers’ children will find it more annoying to slog back to north London for weekend activities.
Inside No 10, teenagers can find the constant requirement to be polite grating. Shaking the hands of dignitaries, donors and permanent secretaries who want to see the flats soon becomes tedious. Carol Thatcher never got over being shoved in a cupboard by her mother one day because she was wearing scruffy jeans when Lord Butler came to visit. “I have a vivid memory of going up to the flat and into the sitting room to discuss some point with Margaret Thatcher and I heard a rustling in a cupboard in the corner of the room,” he said. He asked whether it was mice and the prime minister replied, “No, that’s Carol.” Thatcher’s instinct was always to hide her twin children away, says another former aide, Lord Powell, who felt that “to be perfectly frank, she rather failed” as a mother.
Every prime minister’s family must make their own choices about publicity. The Blairs proudly presented their baby, Leo, in OK! magazine. Cherie says she wanted to have her children photographed in Downing Street to demonstrate that they were doing it as a family. She slightly regretted the decision when Euan, her eldest, was arrested after a post-GCSE bender for being “drunk and incapable” — sick in Leicester Square — and then lied about his age, name and address. But then again the experience may have toughened him up. His apprenticeship company, Multiverse, is worth £1.4 billion ($2.9b), according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
The Starmers, by contrast, are unlikely to divulge much about their flat or their life inside it. The new prime minister is not an oversharer and Vic will not want anyone to see her brand of toaster or discuss who takes the bins out. She was barely seen on the campaign trail and was still in jeans on the morning her husband won his historic victory. The children didn’t join them on the steps to listen to their father’s acceptance speech.
Vic knows that the job of prime minister’s wife is impossible, even if she does rock a red dress. There is no formal role and, anyway, she plans to continue working. Samantha Cameron stepped back from her full-time job as creative director of Smythson when her husband moved in, but she had just had a baby. Thatcher once said in 1995, “If I had my time again, I wouldn’t go into politics because of what it does to your family.” But the Starmers are determined to try it a different way.
If the family get claustrophobic swimming in the goldfish bowl, there is always the mini stately home, Chequers, where there is a full-sized heated indoor pool and where Euan Blair learnt to drive on the private roads. Labour PMs always think they won’t use Chequers much, but the Blairs soon found it was the best place to feel free and invite friends for barbecues. Downing Street is always the centre of government first and a home second. For a few years the family will have to accept that while they use the back door, their dad will go everywhere with four outriders and they will all have to behave while living in the most famous address in Britain, even the pets. As Sunak said in his resignation speech, “I can never thank my family enough for the sacrifices they have made.”
Written by: Alice Thomson
© The Times of London