Having had a peek through the gates of Downing Street, the next item on a tourist’s itinerary is a short stroll across Horse Guards Parade to the Cabinet War Rooms, from where Winston Churchill directed operations in the second world war. We don’t yet know where tourists of the future will be going to view Tony Blair’s own war rooms, but to judge by this week’s pronouncements from the Home Office it may well require a boat trip to the Outer Hebrides.
Should London be struck by a terrorist attack, we are told, the Prime Minister will be removed to a secure base outside London where he will continue to be ‘visible’. Other senior ministers and their civil servants will be relocated to their own departmental headquarters at undisclosed locations throughout the country.
It would be reassuring to believe that these provisions were all part of normal planning for national emergencies.
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