While Mr Balls described his partnership with the Tory peer as “an unusual and unexpected alliance”, it was evidence of the widespread political consensus backing the memorial and its underground learning centre.
The country’s five living former Prime Ministers have come out in support, as well as a coalition of faith leaders including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the chairman of the Mosques and Imams Advisory Council and the head of the Catholic Church in England.
But earlier this month the emergence of a testy letter written in May to the two men by the leader of Westminster Council, Nickie Aiken, suggested the project could be about to hit the planning buffers. She said it was heading for an “unfavourable recommendation” and criticised their “frankly offensive assertions” that the council was being swayed by the number of objectors.
Lord Pickles explained this week that they had written to her because “we were worried about some antisemitic comments that were on the [council] portal which they had taken down, but there was a persistent bunch of people that kept putting them back up.”
In the three months since, he added, “we’ve managed to come to an agreement” with many of the planning issues raised by the council leader. For example, the memorial will be moved a few feet away from tree roots. The council had, he stressed, been “extremely co-operative and helpful”.
When Westminster Council’s planning committee convenes, the most important issue, he said, would be “the use of public land”.
On the JC website earlier this month, Barbara Weiss, the Jewish architect who co-founded the Save Victoria Tower Gardens campaign, contrasted the “small and delicate” garden with the “aggressively sculptural” project planned for it.
But Lord Pickles was adamant the memorial would enhance the garden, which currently was “a dustbowl in summer and a quagmire in winter”. Drainage and pathways would be improved, tree roots better irrigated and there would be disabled access to the Thames.
“It will be a very attractive addition,” he said.
Gufstafson, Porter and Bowman, the company which would be landscaping the gardens around the memorial have just won the competition to landscape the trees around the Eiffel Tower.
Mr Balls said the “emphatic support” offered by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and new Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick — whose mother-in-law is the daughter of Holocaust survivors — “gives us confidence there is overwhelming support nationally for what we are trying to achieve”.
Earlier this year, Mr Jenrick’s predecessor James Brokenshire pledged £25m on top of the £50m earmarked by David Cameron, with a matching £25m to be raised by an appeal led by Gerald Ronson and former Conservative Party chair Lord Feldman.
Both Mr Balls and Lord Pickles remain firm in their conviction the location of the memorial is essential.
“It was a parliament in Germany which made decisions to begin the process that culminated in the Holocaust,” Mr Balls observed.
The current political climate of rising antisemitic attacks across the world and of increasing populism only made it more timely, he believed.
“This is the right time to remind our elected representatives and all of us that in our democratic society, the job of Parliament is to preserve the liberty of all,” he said.
“The Holocaust Memorial next to Parliament will be a daily and constant reminder to our parliamentarians of what their duties and obligations are to all citizens, and not just some.”
In the learning centre, 80 per cent of the space will be dedicated to the Holocaust and around 20 per cent to subsequent genocides.
In keeping with Lord Pickles’s original vision, it will have a strong focus on British reaction to the events of the 1930s and 1940s. While some countries in Europe were trying to “rewrite their history”, Lord Pickles said, the UK centre would take a “warts and all” approach.
“So for example when we talk about the Kindertransport, we will recognise it’s kinder because we wouldn’t let the parents in,” he said.
A board of historians to advise on content is in the process of being set up.
The two men recently launched the Foundation Stones initiative, inviting people across the country to paint stones in memory of a person murdered in the Holocaust or another genocide, which will be placed into the foundations of the proposed memorial.
