Westminster Hall, the one part of the Palace which does date back nearly 1,000 years, is largely redundant; no one knows what to do with its cavernous expanse. I’m not sure any of it is actually fit for purpose any more.
And yet, and yet. This is the place where Winston Churchill’s words rang out, where King Charles I was doomed to death and the suffragette Emily Wilding Davidson squirrelled herself away in the name of winning women the vote.
As a teenager, I ran through the streets to hear Margaret Thatcher’s resignation statement delivered there. One of my first jobs as a young reporter was to observe the Queen Mother lying in state. The verbal bloodletting of Prime Minister’s Questions has to be seen in person to understand its full visceral drama.
At its best, Parliament at Westminster has celebrated the nation’s triumphs and mourned its tragedies. Can it really be time to send in the bulldozers?
One of the last debates I watched as a Parliamentary reporter was George Osborne’s 2015 Budget statement last July – he made clear that the dire state of the nation’s finances meant he could not let up on his austerity drive. Before that, during the expenses scandal in 2009, MPs felt the wrath of the public at the perception they had put their own needs above those of the country. So how can any of them hope to look their constituents in the eye and say almost £4 billion would be better spent restoring the Palace than on schools, hospitals, roads, railways; boots for our troops and meals for hungry children?
"Why not go whole hog and avoid the punishing costs of building in the dead centre of the London property bubble by relocating elsewhere?"
No matter how much those who have worked there love the rodent-infested, mock-Gothic fun palace, perhaps the time has come to let it go. And if we’re getting radical – and this will please the Chancellor – why not go whole hog and avoid the punishing costs of building in the dead centre of the Capital by relocating elsewhere?
How about Manchester? Now that really would be a Northern Powerhouse.
Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/579309/s/4d2bc5e7/sc/13/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cpolitics0C1212580A60CWestminsters0Esinking0B0ETime0Efor0Eour0Erat0Einfested0Eparliament0Eto0Ebe0Esold0Eoff0Bhtml/story01.htm