My walk into work used to take me past the Palace of Westminster. I’d have to bob-and-weave through crowds of tourists, but didn’t mind at all – anyone willing to pay to see my country is fine by me. One day, I walked past an America lady as she gazed up at the Mother of Parliaments: “Is that an old castle? It’s gotta be an old castle!”
As Peter Hitchens (another gothic masterpiece) explains in First Things, the Palace isn’t that old – not even by American standards:
“…the Houses of Parliament, all pinnacles, leaded windows, Gothic courtyards and cloisters… look to the uninitiated as if they are a medieval survival. In fact they were completed in 1860, and are newer than the Capitol in Washington, D.C.”
But despite its relative youth, the building is in a dreadful state. As Members of Parliament return after the party conference season, they know that they have a difficult decision to make regarding the renovation of their workplace. It’s not just the multi-billion pound cost, but the prospect of having to relocate for several years.
You might think that Hitchens would lament the evacuation of this great symbol of Britishness, but no:
“My nastier, more vindictive side rather hopes that it will take so long to renovate the British Houses of Parliament, and the unmistakable clock tower of Big Ben, that MPs have to move out of the building for good, and are rehoused in a hideous modern shed in the suburbs. This may seem spiteful. It is spiteful. Even so, there is a good case for it.”
Hitchens loves the building but believes that Parliament as an institution is no longer “distinguished enough to occupy it”:
“I had hoped for a kingdom of the mind and found a squalid pantry in which greasy, unprincipled deals were made by people who were no better than they ought to be.”
Jeremy Cliffe of the Economist isn’t exactly on the same ideological wavelength as Peter Hitchens, but he too wants Parliament to quit Westminster (and London) for good:
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