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Mr Armstrong goes to Westminster

Under normal circumstances, the only way you can visit The Houses of Parliament is by writing to your MP and asking them to arrange either for you to take a tour, or to sit in the strangers’ gallery during a debate. Now, I don’t know much about my MP, (the honourable member for Brentford & Isleworth, Mrs Ann Keen). I didn’t vote for her, for a start, and her career in government seems rather undistinguished: Judging from her voting history, she is happy to toe the party line (she voted for the war in Iraq, for example). Beyond that, all that I can determine from most of the questions she has asked in Parliament (which are all either about rubbish collection, recycling or the sewage works up the road) is that she thinks my home smells of shit.

However, during the summer recess, anybody can take a guided tour of the palace of Westminster. I was there on Saturday for the first day of this summer’s tours, and found it to be an absolutely fascinating experience. The tour offers a potted history of the buildings, the British monarchy, and the evolution of parliamentary democracy in this country, (one snippet I found amusing: when the monarchy was restored after the end of the republic that resulted from the civil war, the new King Charles had all those who had conspired against his father rounded up and tried for treason, including Cromwell, even though he had died some years earlier. The King had his body exhumed, taken to Westminster hall, tried for (and found guilty of) treason. Cromwell’s dead body was then hung, drawn and quartered).

The main attraction, for me, was the chance to visit the two houses, but you also get to see the Queen’s robing room, used when she arrives to open Parliament each year (where one of the doors leads, apparently, to a convenience – not part of the tour, sadly – for the exclusive use of the monarch), the central lobby (as seen on many an evening news report), and the gloomy Westminster hall (where many deceased monarchs have lain in state, as well as being the venue for trials involving dead bodies of revolutionaries).

I’d thoroughly recommend it, if you have an hour or so to spare over the next month. This tourist stuff’s great.