It’s ‘bong’ out of order, Boris

Write to me c/o Daily Star Sunday, One Canada Square, London E14 5AP

BARRING the most remarkable of turnarounds, our exit from the European Union will be greeted with…silence.

Big Ben, a global symbol of parliamentary democracy, will remain muted. The debate over just what would happen concerning Big Ben’s bongs at 11pm on January 31 started last year when the Conservatives were returned to power.

It now seems to have reached a dreary conclusion.

Some might consider this trivial. Indeed, compared to soaring knife crime, the challenges facing the NHS and the bushfires in Australia, they’d be right. But, without a shred of a doubt, there is skulduggery at play here. Big Ben has sounded once in both of the preceding two months, for Remembrance Sunday and to ring in the new year.

Each time, it cost about £120,000 to build a temporary floor for the belfry, secure the bell in position and protect all the surrounding ongoing works. This seems an extraordinary amount of money, but a study of the costs in November and December supports it.

Somehow, the work done for December 31 was dismantled within days. Why didn’t some civil servant suggest everything stayed in place for just a month longer?

The truth is that most government departments are peopled by staff who voted Remain.

That was their right then, but now they are paid a lot of money to deliver on what we, their employers, have instructed them to do. It is not acceptable that they behave like sulky teenagers.

Having come up with the unimpressive slogan “Bung a bob for a Big Ben bong”, Prime Minister Boris Johnson must seize the moment.

Previous governments have found £9.3million to send a leaflet to all our homes telling us why we shouldn’t support Brexit, £32m for Harry and Meghan’s wedding and £1billion for politicians in Northern Ireland so they could stay in power.

I think someone has dropped the ball badly here.