Pro-Palestine activist comes down from Elizabeth Tower

A man who scaled the clock tower of Big Ben yesterday morning came down just after midnight today, having spent hours barefoot and holding a Palestine flag on the Elizabeth Tower. Pictures from the scene showed the man being lifted to the ground in a cherry picker.

- JOHN BESLEY

Emergency crews had been at the scene with dozens of uniformed police officers guarding the cordon which extended from Bridge Street to Westminster Bridge. Two aerial ladder platforms, an incident response unit ambulance, regular ambulances and two fire engines were also present.

In a video posted on Instagram yesterday evening, the man told negotiators from the ledge he was sat on that he would come down “on his own terms”. In the footage, negotiators on an aerial ladder platform appear to raise concerns about an injury to his foot, saying there is “quite a lot of blood” and that his clothes were not warm enough as temperatures dropped after sunset.