A Christmas tree covered in fairy lights is visible through one of the many neat sash windows of number four Matthew Parker Street in Westminster, central London. The grand Edwardian building of red brick and stone detailing, closed off by iron gates, is the Conservative party’s £50m campaign headquarters.
For 24 days, two grandfathers have been sitting all day against its railings on hunger strike. Peter Cole, 76, is an emeritus professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London and a doctor who has worked around the world with Médecins Sans Frontières. Marko Stepanov, 67, is an artist from former Yugoslavia who first came to London 1986, where he was taken with the free speech demonstrated at Speaker’s Corner.
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