Peter Apps

Blair’s government can’t escape blame for the Grenfell disaster

Tony Blair (Image: Sky News)

‘This is a difficult thing to say, but it’s the honest truth – however good your system is and however well-intentioned it is, and however hard people work, they’re going to make mistakes.’

So said former prime minister Tony Blair on Sky News on Thursday – in response to being asked whether the Grenfell Tower fire represented ‘a failure of leadership’ by government. 

This was a system which Blair’s governments had more than a small hand in creating

It’s possible that Blair – who spends his time these days trotting around the world representing his modestly named ‘Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’ – doesn’t really know much about what caused the Grenfell Tower fire and what the landmark report into it revealed on Wednesday. 

But if that is the case, he might have been better advised to avoid the question than to give a statement which is so categorically wrong. 

Grenfell was not a result of mistakes within a good system.

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