How to bump into buskers, tourists and music-loving MPs
What is it like to work in a national monument that is currently being refurbished?
What is it like to work at the House of Commons? Well, it has its moments. The building is decrepit and the clock tower is currently covered in scaffolding and screens, with nets like awnings sticking out of it, presumably to catch anything that falls off. It looks a bit like a Japanese pagoda, which is ironic because the other day a Japanese tourist stopped me in Parliament Square to ask, “Excuse me, please where is the Big Ben?”
From the look on her face, I think she already knew the answer, before I turned to point at the shrouded shape and apologised on behalf of the nation for her disappointment after a 6,000-mile journey.
Usually I arrive by the Underground, which means being patient with tourists who don’t realise that half the gates on one side are for “in” and the other half for “out”. Then you go past the busker on the steel drums, who is either doing “Happy” by Pharrell Williams or “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid. At this point you might as well take your headphones out.
This is where I sometimes bump into MPs, either taking their headphones out or putting them in. Once it was Andy Burnham, when he was shadow health secretary. I asked what he was listening to, and he said Billy Bragg; he asked what I was listening to, and I said The Charlatans. We discussed whether they were a Manchester band (sort of), at which point he said he thought The Smiths has “not lasted well”. Which I thought was extraordinary for a Manchester MP (who is now mayor of Greater Manchester). So I interviewed him about it – and Labour’s health policy – a few days later.
From the tube station there is an underground entrance to the Palace of Westminster for pass-holders. In recent years you go past one, two or three rough sleepers, which I find as surprising as it is sad. Even if the government doesn’t care about rough sleeping, surely it should have the basic competence to avoid a visible problem on the doorstep of one of the most famous buildings in the country?
Then there is a rickety lift – I always think it won’t make it – up to the media offices behind the press gallery of the House of Commons chamber. Once there, you are at a desk with a computer on it like any other, although you are surrounded by journalists from rival organisations in an intensely competitive media environment. I’ll tell you more about what that’s like another time.
Yours,
John Rentoul
Chief political commentator
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