What should we do with a prorogued parliament? Ask Gary Neville

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a large publicly owned meeting place in a desirable part of London currently not being used for anything.

It is of course, the Palace of Westminster, which used to house Britain’s legislature until it was unceremoniously and unconstitutionally shut down by our unelected prime minister.

Given that it’s not currently fulfilling its intended purpose, shouldn’t we find some other use for it? Government policies have created thousands of new rough sleepers so perhaps we could use at least part of the building to provide some temporary shelter for them.

A good model for this would be the way former Manchester United stars Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs temporarily turned the Grade 2 listed Manchester Stock Exchange into a hotel for the homeless a couple of years ago, ahead of its planned redevelopment. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind serving as consultants to the project.

There’d be a certain poetic justice in people sleeping on the benches more normally sat upon by the government ministers who did so much to create their situation. I know they don’t look like they’d make especially good beds, but Jacob Rees-Mogg managed to make them look pretty darned comfy when he stretched his lanky frame across them rather than paying attention to what was a rather important debate.

The place also comes with liveried staff and a black rod. They could help serve up food cooked up in the kitchens. They’d probably find London’s homeless residents are a tad more polite than the people they usually look after. And less inclined towards bullying too.

Some of the more progressive-minded MPs have talked about convening some sort of “people’s parliament” during the shut down. Putting them in contact with people living at the sharp end of their decisions while they do this surely wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

Need another suggestion? Well, one of the more depressing developments in the capital over recent years has been the drip feed of live music venues closing.

Mostly this has killed smaller ones but there was once some fool in the London Mayor’s office by the name of Boris Johnson who actively supported the trashing of one of the bigger ones – the Earl’s Court exhibition centre.

Now he’s stripped Westminster of its intended purpose, perhaps it could serve as a temporary replacement? Constitutional vandalism providing some recompense for the real vandalism of his political and property developer pals. The singing of opposition MPs to accompany the shutdown proved the acoustics are pretty damn good.

The costs could be met via the Treasury coffers that suddenly seem to be bulging with an election in the offing. Johnson could get his public relations man (sorry, chancellor), Sajid Javid, to draft a press release announcing an addendum to the spending review.

Given the mess he’s making of the country, a free music festival is the very least the pair of them could do for us. Food might be in short supply courtesy of the no-deal Brexit they fancy for us, not to mention medicines, but at least those of us with long-term conditions like the type 1 diabetes I have will be able to go out to a rocking sound track.

Some of us, myself included, will need some painkillers, with drugs like Gabapentin likely to be hard to come by. The ports might soon resemble a massive traffic jam, but despite the millions of pounds spent on trying to stamp it out, weed is rarely in short supply. It might do in a pinch.

I know, I know, it’s illegal. But one of those technicalities everyone’s talking about at the moment might help us here. It’s only possession of it that’s against the law. So “the Saj” and “BoZo” could just arrange to have a big bong put on a table in the middle of the debating chamber from which we can take a pain-killing toot as required.

What? There’s a smoking ban. That too is against the law and you can’t get around it on a technicality? Well if our own prime minister says it’s ok to break the law of the land, why shouldn’t we?

Alternatively, you could something really radical, something unthinkable.

You could use the buildings to let parliament do its actual job.