Inside Downing Street briefing room as £80,000 revamp makes TV debut

Keir Starmer has held his first press conference in the Downing Street briefing room after up to £80,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent on a ‘politically neutral’ refurbishment

Keir Starmer has held his first press conference in the Downing Street briefing room after up to £80,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent on a “politically neutral” refurbishment.

The room, in 9 Downing Street, was redecorated during December and the Prime Minister used it on Tuesday morning to make his statement on the Southport atrocity.

The blue panels which had formed the backdrop to the press conference stage have been replaced with wood panels with inlaid lighting. The colour blue is traditionally associated with the Conservatives in British politics.

A Government crest was fitted on the wall behind the Prime Minister’s podium ahead of Mr Starmer’s statement. The blue panels which surrounded the TV screen on the stage have been replaced by grey ones, while the blue carpet lining the stage has also been swapped for one in various shades of grey.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman has previously described the changes as a “one-off refresh”. He said the revamp was “to restore the room to a politically neutral setting”.

“The panelling restores the room back to its original state,” the spokesman said. “The cost is obviously a fraction of what the previous administration spent on the room.” It is understood the cost of the revamp amounted to less than £80,000.

Under Boris Johnson, the previous government spent £2.6million converting the space into a TV briefing room that opened in 2021, a move Labour at the time labelled a “vanity project”. The government had planned to hold White House-style press briefings in the room on camera, but scrapped the idea.

The room has since been used to host press conferences as well as the daily lobby briefing for journalists. It previously served as the courtroom for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council before it moved to the Supreme Court building in 2009.

On Tuesday Mr Starmer used the room for an emergency press conference on the Southport stabbings. The PM said Britain is facing a “new threat” of “extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms”.

He said the “barbaric” murder of three girls last summer was a “devastating moment” in our history as he vowed to answer “grave questions” about how the children were failed by the state. He told the nation bluntly that “terrorism has changed” in this country explaining that Britain used to face threats predominantly from organised groups “with clear political intent” like Al Qaeda but that now we see “loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms” accessing material online “desperate for notoriety”.

The PM vowed to review our entire “counter-extremist system” as well as look at whether terrorism laws need to change. And he also criticised social media giants who make it easy for people to access a “tidal wave of violence” on their sites.

Mr Starmer called the press conference after Vile killer Axel Rudakubana yesterday pleaded guilty to murdering Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, in a frenzied attack on a Taylor Swift-themed class on July 29. After legal restrictions on the case were lifted, the PM said the young girls were “failed” by state agencies who should have identified the risk of Rudakubana.