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| Grenfell Tower’s residents were failed long before fire broke out | Grenfell Tower’s residents were failed long before fire broke out |
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| Damned if she does. Damned if she doesn’t. There is a point in the decline of a leader when they can get nothing right. “Stay Away Theresa May.” So reads one of the messages on the tribute wall memorialising the victims of the Grenfell Tower inferno. She did stay away from the grieving, the dispossessed and the angry in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. | Damned if she does. Damned if she doesn’t. There is a point in the decline of a leader when they can get nothing right. “Stay Away Theresa May.” So reads one of the messages on the tribute wall memorialising the victims of the Grenfell Tower inferno. She did stay away from the grieving, the dispossessed and the angry in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. |
| On her first visit to the scene, the prime minister met only fire chiefs and senior police officers, rather than put herself in front of any of the survivors of the blaze. Whether it was borne of fright or incomprehension, that was a dreadful mistake. For an already furious community, here was further evidence that insensitive authority neither listens nor cares and is coldly unresponsive, even at a time of the most acute distress. | On her first visit to the scene, the prime minister met only fire chiefs and senior police officers, rather than put herself in front of any of the survivors of the blaze. Whether it was borne of fright or incomprehension, that was a dreadful mistake. For an already furious community, here was further evidence that insensitive authority neither listens nor cares and is coldly unresponsive, even at a time of the most acute distress. |
| It was only on Friday, a chorus of condemnation for her earlier non-visit now ringing in her ears, that Mrs May met some of the survivors in hospital and at a church. A crowd gathered to jeer that she was a “coward” as the prime minister was hurried away under heavy police guard. Faced with a catastrophe that has traumatised the community and transfixed the nation with horror, she advertised her deficiencies as a leader. Number 10 then made it even worse by suggesting that “security implications” kept her away. The nonagenarian head of state managed to visit the victims’ relief centre. Making the “security” of the prime minister the issue insulted the community by implying that she did not talk to them for fear of being attacked. That “security” excuse further fuelled the question: who was paying any attention to the safety of the residents of the tower before the deadly night when it was devoured by flames? | It was only on Friday, a chorus of condemnation for her earlier non-visit now ringing in her ears, that Mrs May met some of the survivors in hospital and at a church. A crowd gathered to jeer that she was a “coward” as the prime minister was hurried away under heavy police guard. Faced with a catastrophe that has traumatised the community and transfixed the nation with horror, she advertised her deficiencies as a leader. Number 10 then made it even worse by suggesting that “security implications” kept her away. The nonagenarian head of state managed to visit the victims’ relief centre. Making the “security” of the prime minister the issue insulted the community by implying that she did not talk to them for fear of being attacked. That “security” excuse further fuelled the question: who was paying any attention to the safety of the residents of the tower before the deadly night when it was devoured by flames? |
| Some see a similarity with George W Bush and his response to hurricane Katrina, when the closest the then American president got to the victims of that disaster was to peer down on the inundation of New Orleans from the remoteness of Air Force One. That did damage to his reputation from which he never recovered. The difference is that Mrs May’s approval ratings were in freefall even before the conflagration in west London. She was already a broken prime minister whose authority had been evaporated by her backfiring election gambit. The Grenfell Tower catastrophe may accelerate her departure from Number 10, but this is a much larger moment than just a story of a shrinking leader failing to find the appropriate response to horror and grief. This will be one of those disasters that resonate down the decades, both because of the terrible scale of the death toll and what it says about the era in which it took place. It asks big questions and will demand big answers. | Some see a similarity with George W Bush and his response to hurricane Katrina, when the closest the then American president got to the victims of that disaster was to peer down on the inundation of New Orleans from the remoteness of Air Force One. That did damage to his reputation from which he never recovered. The difference is that Mrs May’s approval ratings were in freefall even before the conflagration in west London. She was already a broken prime minister whose authority had been evaporated by her backfiring election gambit. The Grenfell Tower catastrophe may accelerate her departure from Number 10, but this is a much larger moment than just a story of a shrinking leader failing to find the appropriate response to horror and grief. This will be one of those disasters that resonate down the decades, both because of the terrible scale of the death toll and what it says about the era in which it took place. It asks big questions and will demand big answers. |
| Some of them should come from the public inquiry that Mrs May has ordered. That she did get right, although she really did not have any choice but to announce a judge-led investigation into the fire. Some have responded with cynicism to the prospect of an inquiry. They fear that its terms of reference will be manipulated to protect the powerful. Certainly, that must be watched like a hawk, but good can come of it if the investigation is done well. The inquiries into the fire at the Bradford City stadium and the Hillsborough crush in the 1980s led to the transformation of football grounds. The investigation into the King’s Cross fire prompted modernisation of safety on the underground. Inquiries into the Potters Bar and Paddington rail crashes effected remedial measures to save future lives. | Some of them should come from the public inquiry that Mrs May has ordered. That she did get right, although she really did not have any choice but to announce a judge-led investigation into the fire. Some have responded with cynicism to the prospect of an inquiry. They fear that its terms of reference will be manipulated to protect the powerful. Certainly, that must be watched like a hawk, but good can come of it if the investigation is done well. The inquiries into the fire at the Bradford City stadium and the Hillsborough crush in the 1980s led to the transformation of football grounds. The investigation into the King’s Cross fire prompted modernisation of safety on the underground. Inquiries into the Potters Bar and Paddington rail crashes effected remedial measures to save future lives. |
| The Grenfell Tower inquiry will be under competing pressures. It has to be thorough. It will need to be true to the promise that “no stone will be left unturned” in excavating the causes and learning the appropriate lessons. Some lines of inquiry have already been established from the testimony of experts and witnesses who have spoken in the wake of the inferno. An entire nation joins the locals in asking whether it can be true that the tower was clad in flammable panels with the terrifying result that the building ignited like a torch. And when a more fire-resistant alternative was available for a total cost for the whole building of less than £5,000. Is that really the price – five grand – that was put on so many lives? | The Grenfell Tower inquiry will be under competing pressures. It has to be thorough. It will need to be true to the promise that “no stone will be left unturned” in excavating the causes and learning the appropriate lessons. Some lines of inquiry have already been established from the testimony of experts and witnesses who have spoken in the wake of the inferno. An entire nation joins the locals in asking whether it can be true that the tower was clad in flammable panels with the terrifying result that the building ignited like a torch. And when a more fire-resistant alternative was available for a total cost for the whole building of less than £5,000. Is that really the price – five grand – that was put on so many lives? |
| The inquiry should have the powers to demand all papers and summon any person it needs to interrogate. An imperative will be to give voice to the residents who say that they continually expressed fears about the safety of building, only to be ignored by the council and the landlord, to which it had contracted out management of the tower. The inquiry must be able to summon all relevant decision-makers, past and present, including Gavin Barwell, the prime minister’s chief of staff and a former housing minister, to account for why building regulations have not been updated for so long and why previous recommendations to improve the safety of tower blocks were not implemented. | The inquiry should have the powers to demand all papers and summon any person it needs to interrogate. An imperative will be to give voice to the residents who say that they continually expressed fears about the safety of building, only to be ignored by the council and the landlord, to which it had contracted out management of the tower. The inquiry must be able to summon all relevant decision-makers, past and present, including Gavin Barwell, the prime minister’s chief of staff and a former housing minister, to account for why building regulations have not been updated for so long and why previous recommendations to improve the safety of tower blocks were not implemented. |
| So the inquiry must be thorough and unflinching in holding those responsible to account. At the same time, it needs to be about its business as rapidly as is humanly possible. This is too urgent for there to be a repeat of the ridiculous length of time it took for the Chilcot inquiry to come to conclusions about the Iraq war or the 12 years that expired before the Saville inquiry finally published its report on Bloody Sunday. Thousands of families across Britain live in tower blocks similar to Grenfell Tower. They will not feel safe in their beds until they have an explanation of why this happened and the assurance that every appropriate measure has been taken to minimise the risk of a repetition. | So the inquiry must be thorough and unflinching in holding those responsible to account. At the same time, it needs to be about its business as rapidly as is humanly possible. This is too urgent for there to be a repeat of the ridiculous length of time it took for the Chilcot inquiry to come to conclusions about the Iraq war or the 12 years that expired before the Saville inquiry finally published its report on Bloody Sunday. Thousands of families across Britain live in tower blocks similar to Grenfell Tower. They will not feel safe in their beds until they have an explanation of why this happened and the assurance that every appropriate measure has been taken to minimise the risk of a repetition. |
| There are larger questions about society that cannot be answered by the inquiry and must now become central to the national conversation. I am very struck that it is not just obvious people on the left who are interpreting the Grenfell Tower inferno as symptom and symbol of things that are rotten about contemporary Britain. There are some on the right who now acknowledge that we have reached an inflection point in the national debate about inequality and austerity. | There are larger questions about society that cannot be answered by the inquiry and must now become central to the national conversation. I am very struck that it is not just obvious people on the left who are interpreting the Grenfell Tower inferno as symptom and symbol of things that are rotten about contemporary Britain. There are some on the right who now acknowledge that we have reached an inflection point in the national debate about inequality and austerity. |
| We have a housing crisis that has been getting deeper for decades under governments of all stripes. This disaster particularly speaks to the stigmatisation of social housing, especially high-rises. It is a reprimand to a cult of deregulation that has been so avidly promoted by some on the right. On the grounds of good taste alone, no one should ever again be heard to bray for “a bonfire of red tape”. Something is changing in the political atmosphere when Sajid Javid, one of the cabinet’s most aggressive advocates of shrinking the state and slashing spending, feels compelled to promise that the government “will do whatever it takes”, without limit on action or cost, to make things right. Perhaps some Conservatives might also like to recalibrate their attitudes towards Europe. Flammable cladding is banned from high towers in Germany and several other continental countries. A bit more Europe might have saved a lot of lives in west London. | We have a housing crisis that has been getting deeper for decades under governments of all stripes. This disaster particularly speaks to the stigmatisation of social housing, especially high-rises. It is a reprimand to a cult of deregulation that has been so avidly promoted by some on the right. On the grounds of good taste alone, no one should ever again be heard to bray for “a bonfire of red tape”. Something is changing in the political atmosphere when Sajid Javid, one of the cabinet’s most aggressive advocates of shrinking the state and slashing spending, feels compelled to promise that the government “will do whatever it takes”, without limit on action or cost, to make things right. Perhaps some Conservatives might also like to recalibrate their attitudes towards Europe. Flammable cladding is banned from high towers in Germany and several other continental countries. A bit more Europe might have saved a lot of lives in west London. |
| Many have commented on this horror happening in Kensington, a borough in which some of London’s poorest people live within yards of some of its most expensive properties. This contrast was seized upon by Jeremy Corbyn when he borrowed from Dickens to depict it as a “tale of two cities”. The Labour leader also presented himself to advantage by doing what the prime minister did not and going quickly to meet the victims. | Many have commented on this horror happening in Kensington, a borough in which some of London’s poorest people live within yards of some of its most expensive properties. This contrast was seized upon by Jeremy Corbyn when he borrowed from Dickens to depict it as a “tale of two cities”. The Labour leader also presented himself to advantage by doing what the prime minister did not and going quickly to meet the victims. |
| It is absurd to try to silence any argument about the root causes of this disaster on the grounds that this “politicises” tragedy. Labour has a right to ask questions about how this could happen in the capital city of one of the richest nations on the planet. As the official opposition, it has a duty to press those questions. Labour has become a party that, contrary to its pre-election expectations, thinks it might have power within sight. So the party also has to take some care about how it prosecutes its case. Better to be forensic than self-righteous. | It is absurd to try to silence any argument about the root causes of this disaster on the grounds that this “politicises” tragedy. Labour has a right to ask questions about how this could happen in the capital city of one of the richest nations on the planet. As the official opposition, it has a duty to press those questions. Labour has become a party that, contrary to its pre-election expectations, thinks it might have power within sight. So the party also has to take some care about how it prosecutes its case. Better to be forensic than self-righteous. |
| If you look at the roll call of grotesque calamities that have happened in Britain since 1945, you will find that they have not all happened on the Tories’ watch and the culprit has not always been the private sector. London has a Labour mayor and Sadiq Khan felt some of the sting of the community’s fury when he went to the scene. His two predecessors in charge of the capital city were Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone, one Tory, one Labour. | If you look at the roll call of grotesque calamities that have happened in Britain since 1945, you will find that they have not all happened on the Tories’ watch and the culprit has not always been the private sector. London has a Labour mayor and Sadiq Khan felt some of the sting of the community’s fury when he went to the scene. His two predecessors in charge of the capital city were Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone, one Tory, one Labour. |
| Here and now, most of the hard questions are for the government. The state has no more fundamental responsibility than keeping people safe. It did not discharge that basic duty towards the residents of Grenfell Tower. We know enough already to strongly suspect that this was an avoidable disaster. It never had to happen. The burnt-out hulk on the skyline of one of the world’s wealthiest cities stands as a fierce rebuke to that fatal failure. | Here and now, most of the hard questions are for the government. The state has no more fundamental responsibility than keeping people safe. It did not discharge that basic duty towards the residents of Grenfell Tower. We know enough already to strongly suspect that this was an avoidable disaster. It never had to happen. The burnt-out hulk on the skyline of one of the world’s wealthiest cities stands as a fierce rebuke to that fatal failure. |
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