The Palace of Westminster is falling apart and we've decided to do...nothing

WHEN I meet a parliamentarian my first question is always: do you know where your nearest fire exit is? Because the Palace of Westminster, built on Thorney Island, an eyot in Thames, is falling apart. Not falling down (though the Victoria Tower leans 22mm to the north-west) but apart.

It is an exquisite metaphor for our parliamentary democracy. The palace is unsafe, and last week Parliament decided what it would do about it. Nothing.

It last burned down on October 16, 1834, after two workmen burnt some tally sticks, an ancient form of record, in a stove under the Lords chamber and the chimney caught fire. The 11th-century Westminster Hall only survived because it was already in scaffold. The historian Thomas Carlyle was in the crowd that night and wrote: "A man sorry I did not anywhere see". (This was before universal suffrage).

If the palace were any other workplace it would be ruled unsafe, and they would be moved into portacabins like schoolchildren. But parliamentarians, who are a curious blend of self-hatred, grandiosity and cynicism, do not pay themselves that courtesy.