Tory says £500,000 will be raised in days to ring Big Ben for Brexit day
A BREXITEER Tory has predicted that the £500,000 needed to get Big Ben to ring for Brexit will be raised within days.
Mark Francois, who has promised £1,000, said: “I think we will get it within 48 hours” – but accused the House of Commons authorities of exaggerating the cost of bringing the currently silent bell back into operation.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock also backed the campaign, saying he would “love to hear the Big Ben bong on Brexit day”.
So far, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “bung a bob for a Big Ben bong” proposal to get the bell to ring on Brexit night is attracting muted support on crowdfunding websites, with no official campaign.
Meanwhile, Leave campaigners’ calls for church bells to peal across the nation when the UK leaves the EU at 11pm on January 31 were also being met with opposition.
Bell-ringing representatives released a statement to say they do not endorse the act being carried out in churches “for political reasons” such as Brexit.
Big Ben has been silenced since 2017 with renovations under way, but ardent Brexiteers have called for the work to be paused so the bell can ring in the new relationship at an estimated cost of £500,000.
Mr Francois told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “It seems to me and many of my colleagues in the House of Commons patently daft that we have got the most iconic clock in the world – literally, it’s a world heritage site – that that should stay silent on this occasion.”
He claimed the costs were “massively exaggerated” because “officials in the House of Commons just don’t want to do it”.