Big Ben: “Bong-o-gone-o, that’s so wrong-o”

The moment was preceded by an almighty ding-dong, but when Big Ben finally fell silent last week, it did so without “so much as a grumble”, said Guy Kelly in The Daily Telegraph. Under gunmetal grey skies, around 1,000 members of the public – office workers on their lunchbreaks and tourists armed with selfie sticks – had gathered just before midday to hear the bell strike for the last time before its mechanism was stopped, to allow vital restoration work to the clock and its tower – a project expected to take four years. They were joined by around 200 parliamentary staff and a few MPS. Theresa May was nowhere to be seen, although she’d weighed in against the silencing of the bells the moment she returned from her holidays. Nor was Jacob Rees-mogg – who’d demanded that Big Ben bong out our departure from the EU. However, Labour’s Stephen Pound was there. “Bong-o-gone-o, that’s so wrong-o” he intoned, to a gaggle of reporters. Later, he would “melodramatically” dab his eyes with a handkerchief, insisting – to the conviction of not many – that his tears were real.

Yet “you don’t have to be a dewy-eyed sentimentalist to question the silencing of our national sound”, said Robert Hardman in the Daily Mail. I agree that workers on the tower should not have to endure the bells: a few years ago, I myself stood next to Big Ben as it bonged just four times, an experience that left me “jangling like a wind chime for an hour or so”. The 13.7-tonne bell sounds over ten miles. But even if the restoration work really has to take four years, surely it cannot be beyond the wit of man to turn the chimes on whenever workers are not present (rather than merely on occasions such as New Year’s Eve and Remembrance Day). A review has been promised that may lead to a compromise, said The Daily Telegraph, and thank goodness for that. “Now more than ever,” Britain needs Big Ben – that symbol of our democracy and national pride – to ring out loud and clear.

Of course, it is very sad that this great landmark – the most photographed in Britain – is going under wraps, but even if the might of Hitler’s Luftwaffe never managed to stop it, the clock has been slowed or stopped before: by starlings perching on the minute hand in 1949; by an explosion in 1976; for maintenance in 2007. Life went on then, as it will now, said the Daily Mirror. Let’s hope the “bong bores”, who have banged on about this issue for weeks, will have woken up on Tuesday to realise that the silencing of Big Ben is not the most pressing issue facing Britain today.