Parliaments get facelifts; but it is politics that really needs one

BRITAIN’S MPs were debating tax reform in April when water from a broken pipe started pouring into the House of Commons. This was unsurprising. The Palace of Westminster, a mostly neo-Gothic building that was completed in 1870, had for years endured rusty plumbing, crumbling stonework and sparking electrics. MPs gamely continued the debate. But Justin Madders, a Labour MP, saw in the deluge a symbol, suggesting how “many people view Parliament as broken”.

In a few years’ time MPs will have to relocate as the building is patched up, joining a long list of politicians in temporary digs. Earlier this year Canadian legislators moved out of the central parliamentary block for about ten years. Austrian MPs are meeting in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna while their building is renovated. Dutch politicians are preparing to vacate the 13th-century Binnenhof complex in the Hague. Parliamentarians in Egypt, Jamaica, Thailand and Uganda are all getting new homes.