{"id":89797,"date":"2026-02-06T07:18:57","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T07:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=89797"},"modified":"2026-02-06T07:18:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T07:18:57","slug":"knock-it-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/02\/06\/knock-it-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Knock it down?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2026\/feb\/05\/restoring-the-palace-of-westminster-could-cost-eye-watering-40bn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Guardian noted last night<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Plans to restore the crumbling\u00a0Palace of Westminster\u00a0could cost \u00a340bn and take up to 61 years, a report by the body set up to investigate how the project should be handled has found.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Critics labelled the cost as \u201ceye-watering\u201d and said the project lacked accountability.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This cost is absurd and utterly disproportionate.<\/p>\n<p>What is the answer? It has to be knocking the whole place down and starting again. Repairing a building already wholly unfit for purpose at phenomenal cost is absurd.<\/p>\n<p>Are these people utterly incapable of identifying the obvious?<\/p>\n<p>And, getting rid of this place might be important. Built as a symbol of privilege and separation from the population at large, it continues to reinforce such ideas. Getting rid of it might be the best thing we can do. Replacing it with something vastly more open would symbolise a new democracy. But is that what MPs are frightened of?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the Guardian noted last night: Plans to restore the crumbling\u00a0Palace of Westminster\u00a0could cost \u00a340bn and take up to 61 years, a report by the<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/02\/06\/knock-it-down\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89797"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89803,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89797\/revisions\/89803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}