If MPs can’t fix the Palace of Westminster, how will they fix Britain?
The Palace of Westminster is a perfect mentonym for the state of Britain. It’s recognised and envied the world over. It’s both ceremonial and functional, ancient and modern. Like our democracy, it’s beautiful, but it’s also broken, infested with pests and at imminent risk of immolation in a ball of fire. Yet our entire political class is incapable of fixing this jewel of our national heritage even though it is literally the roof over their own heads.
Understand the mess that is the Restoration and Renewal Programme for the Palace of Westminster and you will understand why we are a country that can’t build, can’t grow and whose leaders can’t govern. Both houses agreed in 2012 that repairs were necessary but it took until 2015 just to produce a scoping document. Since then there have been , the most recent running to 128 pages. Yet still no decision has been taken – and the Conservatives are now calling for the current proposals to be paused.
It is reasonable to object to a plan that will take 60 years and cost £40bn. Demanding a Victorian building be made net zero and that every obscure back corridor be wheelchair accessible is plainly absurd. But it is not reasonable to continue doing nothing.
House of pain
Some cast doubt on the country’s ability to complete a project of this complexity, pointing to the fiasco over a new security door for the House of Lords which is both hideous and useless despite costing £9.6m. But that is a counsel of despair. If Medieval stonemasons could build Westminster Hall with their hands it cannot be beyond us to mend it.
Others say that Parliament should be moved out of London and its present home turned into a museum. This argument fails the test of basic common sense – a museum would still need to be safe for human occupation, so extensive repairs would still be necessary and likely worse value to the taxpayer than maintaining it as a workplace. But it also fails on principle. London is our capital city, of course it should also be the seat of our government and of the monarch when he meets it. Moving parliament to a worse city would be constitutional vandalism driven only by contempt for MPs and a desire to make their lives more miserable.
Every British child grows up knowing that Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Our politicians should be remembered forever in ignominy if, through indolence and indecision, they let them burn to the ground.
Alys Denby is opinion and features editor of City PM