A SCULPTURE of former prime minister Winston Churchill has been removed from the Oval Office following Joe Biden’s inauguration.
A bust of Churchill was given a gift to Bush from Tony Blair, but was removed from the office and replaced with one of Martin Luther King Jr during Barack Obama’s leadership.
The sculpture was sent back to the British embassy in line with normal protocol as it had been loaned to the Bush administration.
Former president Donald Trump displayed a bust of Churchill in the office once again, in a nod to the so-called “special relationship”.
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Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said he had encouraged the businessman to display the wartime leader in his office, to which Trump had a “positive reaction”.
Now following the inauguration of Biden, Churchill is no longer represented among the sculptures in the room.
The bust has now been swapped with one of labour leader Cesar Chavez, who founded the National Farm Workers Association (now the United Farm Workers).
Chavez led a five-year strike by grape pickers and a national boycott which won support across America. The leader, who died in 1993, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Biden’s newly decorated office also includes busts of Rosa Parks and President Abraham Lincoln.
According to the Cesar Chavez Foundation the bust was sent to DC at the White House’s request. Paul F Chavez, the president of the foundation, said: "Placing a bust of my father in the Oval Office symbolises the hopeful new day that is dawning for our nation.
"That isn’t just because it honours my dad, but more importantly because it represents faith and empowerment for an entire people on whose behalf he fought and sacrificed."
Discussing the office makeover with the Washington Post, a Biden spokesperson said it shows that "differences of opinion, expressed within the guardrails of the Republic, are essential to democracy".
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Meanwhile Oval Office operations deputy director Ashley Williams said it was key for Biden to walk into an Oval Office that “looked like America”.
When Obama removed the Oval Office Churchill bust, Boris Johnson, then mayor of London, suggested the president had an “ancestral dislike of the British Empire”.
Johnson suggested the removal was a “snub to Britain” but Obama insisted that was not the case.
He said he had a second bust of the former PM, telling reporters: “My private office is called the Treaty Room. Right outside the door of the Treaty Room so that I see it every day, including on weekends when I’m going into that office to watch a basketball game, the primary image I see is a bust of Winston Churchill.
“It’s there voluntarily ‘cause I can do anything on the second floor. I love Winston Churchill, I love the guy."
Downing Street today declined to criticise Biden for removing the bust
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “The Oval Office is the president’s private office and it’s up to the president to decorate it as he wishes.
“I would point you back to what the Prime Minister has said previously about looking forward to working closely with Joe Biden.
“We’re in no doubt of the importance that president Biden places on the UK and US relationship, and the Prime Minister looks forward to having a close relationship with him.”
Pressed on Johnson’s past criticism of Obama when he removed the bust, the spokesman said: “It’s for the president to decorate the oval office as he sees fit but we have a continuing close special relationship with the US and the Prime Minister looks forward to continuing that.”
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