Brexiters lament the fact that Big Ben will not ring for Brexit. But isn’t being thwarted just how they like it?
There will be no chimes at midnight. Anglican vicars have declined the suggestions of Brexiters that they should ring the bells of their churches to hail the beginning of the “golden age” that, as Boris Johnson has assured us, will be inaugurated by Brexit on 31 January. And Big Ben will not bong. The silence that Westminster’s great clock tower has maintained since its clapper was removed while restoration works are in progress will not be broken. Johnson claimed that he was “working up a plan so people can bung a bob for a Big Ben bong”. The plan turned out to be like all his other Brexit plans, which is to say nonexistent. So at this moment of destiny the prime minister will surely adapt John Donne. Ask not for whom the bell doesn’t toll. It doesn’t toll for thee.
Never mind that the bongs would, rather deliciously, mark the supremacy of Brussels time: midnight in the EU’s capital being the rather less resonant 11pm in London. Never mind that the £500,000 cost of a temporary restoration would work out at £45,000 per bong, surely the most expensive rings since Richard Burton bought jewellery for Elizabeth Taylor.
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