The lessons of Grenfell

The opening of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry is good news. It will now become harder for politicians and campaigners to do as they did in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and exploit it for their own ends.

The 72 who died were not victims of an uncaring government bureaucracy, as some on the right have said. Nor was this about austerity and ‘Tory cuts’. The costs of the renovation which had been completed shortly before the fire worked out at more than £70,000 per flat: money had been spent, and an expensive deathtrap unwittingly created. The company which managed the block, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) was no heartless international corporation but a not-for-profit company set up with the express purpose of bringing management of social housing closer to the people who live in it.

Those who managed the block cannot be called uncaring. They were council tenants and local councillors — including, in the past, Emma Dent Coad, the Labour MP for Kensington.