Rachel Reeves has replaced a portrait of Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor with a picture of one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

On the eve of the Government’s first Budget, the Treasury released a photograph of the Chancellor in her office in No 11 in front of a new portrait of Ellen Wilkinson, a former Labour education minister.

Ms Wilkinson was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920 before becoming a Labour MP.

Photographs of Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak at the same desk in Downing Street show that a photograph of Nigel Lawson was previously hanging on the wall.

Asked about the portrait swap, a Treasury spokesman said: “Change.”