Keir Starmer was very clearly conscious of the symbolism in selecting to carry his first set-piece speech as prime minister within the Downing Road backyard. And, as with a lot political symbolism, this included a specific amount of deliberate myth-making.
To start on a reasonably prosaic level, whereas even No 10 described the venue because the “rose garden”, there isn’t actually any such factor.
Behind No 10 and No 11 Downing Road there’s a large, mixed again backyard, together with a big expanse of garden at one finish of which Starmer stood in entrance of a lectern. There are a handful of rose bushes, however it is extremely a lot not a rose backyard, the title seemingly utilized in mimicry of the extra well-known – and precise – rose backyard on the White Home.
The London model holds a peculiar twin function as a personal backyard for the prime minister and chancellor of the time, plus their households, and as a public house for some official receptions – and, infamously, for much less official ones.
At all times one thing of a heat climate spillover for the various dozens of workers who work within the buildings, the backyard was the scene of a sequence of Covid lockdown-flouting events below Boris Johnson.
Maybe the best-known picture of that point confirmed the then prime minister and his staff ingesting wine on the massive terrace subsequent to the buildings in Could 2020, whereas others gathered round an impromptu drinks trolley arrange on the garden.
At one other gathering, in April 2021, revellers reportedly broken a backyard swing arrange for Johnson’s son, Wilfred.
“They didn’t just break a garden swing with their rose garden antics,” Starmer wrote in a barely clunking analogy in an opinion piece for Tuesday’s Occasions. “They broke something even more fragile and more precious: the trust of the British people in politics and their politicians.”
Starmer explicitly talked about the events in his speech, attended not solely by journalists but additionally members of the general public he met in the course of the election. “This garden, and this building, are now back in your service,” he stated.
In one other Covid echo, not talked about within the speech, the backyard was the venue for Dominic Cummings’ barely weird Could 2020 press convention at which he sought to clarify his travels across the nation throughout lockdown.
In all probability the best-known official occasions hosted in recent times within the Downing Road backyard got here in Could 2010, when David Cameron and Nick Clegg used it for his or her chummy joint announcement in regards to the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition authorities.
However for essentially the most half, even in summer season, the outside house is never used for occasions like press conferences, for 2 causes.
Firstly, getting giant numbers of non-staff members into Downing Road is logistically time-consuming, with everybody having at hand over their telephones as they enter for safety causes. After which there’s the sheer unpredictability of the British climate.
And that leads us to essentially the most prosaic aspect of all within the selection of venue. For all that Starmer made a advantage of utilizing the backyard, additionally one more reason: the far more generally used purpose-built press convention room in 9 Downing Road, constructed below Johnson, is out of motion for refurbishment work.
