Chancellor has previously pledged to ensure all art in No 11 is either by female artists or of female figures

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Rachel Reeves has been criticised for replacing a portrait of Nigel Lawson in her Treasury office with one of Ellen Wilkinson, the trail-blazing politician who organised the Jarrow March and was one of the first female cabinet ministers.

Born in Manchester, Wilkinson became an MP for Jarrow in 1935 and a year later organised the march known as the Jarrow Crusade, as workers from the north-east walked to London to protest soaring unemployment that had devastated the area.