A sepulchral maze of dark, asbestos-lined corridors, the palace of Westminster is dangerous and dysfunctional
A few years ago, I spent several months visiting the Palace of Westminster, where 56 MPs are now reportedly accused of sexual misconduct and one has admitted watching porn on his phone. It was eye-opening. I explored its roofscapes and back offices; I stood in the secret domed space above the central lobby; I picked my way through the labyrinth of tunnels below the high-tide level of the Thames, seeing its tangles of ageing pipework, its electrical cables and its groaning Victorian sewage tanks.
Not least because of its tight security, the palace feels like a place unto itself: a tiny city-state cut off from the world outside. Aside from MPs and Lords, there are 6,000 passholders: caterers, clerks, contractors, political correspondents, administrators, cleaners. It (notoriously) has its own bars; it has its own hairdresser and nursery. It even had a firing range, in which, until 2015, members could take shooting lessons from special branch officers. There are other workplaces that envelop workers in a sort of shadow of a real life – but even the office-playgrounds of US tech companies won’t serve you eclairs and stewed tea in a panelled dining room or make available boxes of snuff, such as are placed outside the debating chambers in the mother of parliaments.
Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer
