Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Grenfell’s a symbol of a broken Britain
Homes bill was voted down by 72 Conservative landlords
BEFORE that towering inferno stopped us all in our tracks we were talking about vellum. Yes, vellum. The goatskin parchment on which the Queen’s Speech has to be written, which takes days for ink to dry on it, and was supposedly stopping the State Opening Of Parliament. Like men in tights with black rods, us British have to do things just right when it comes to making our law. It’s tradition. It’s what sets us apart from the riff-raff. As for the laws themselves, well, they’re secondary, really. Take last year’s Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill, proposed by Labour, which may have stopped that Grenfell Tower inferno had the government voted for it. But Tory MPS voted it down, 72 of whom were landlords who would have been out of pocket through all the extra nanny state interference. One of them, Philip Davies, argued it would put “a huge burden on landlords” who are “an easy target for the Left in this country”. They certainly are now, Phil. But not for the Right, who believe landlords (in many cases, them) should be free to make as much rent as they want without being bogged down by all that expensive red tape. Not that the Right is totally against state intervention in housing. Ask Jacob Rees-mogg’s in-laws, whose ancestral pile, the 365-room Wentworth Woodhouse, was given a £7.6million restoration grant last year. The same Rees-mogg who repeatedly voted for the Bedroom Tax, which punished people with one extra room. Oh yes, the Establishment can always find that Magic Money Tree when it suits them. Which is why we’re spending £369m refurbishing 775-room Buckingham Palace to make it fit for one family, but can’t find the £200,000 to put sprinklers in flats a stone’s throw away, where 600 people lived, literally on top of each other. The Tory media loves to bang on about how “elf ’n’ safety” has gone mad and red tape is a needless burden on business. Some have even maliciously tried to blame the Grenfell blaze on EU regulations, despite the killer cladding being banned in Germany because it’s deemed flammable. But not here, where since Thatcher’s time we’ve been cutting corners to aid private profiteers. Many on the Right hail Brexit as a golden opportunity to throw all of the EU’S overbearing rules and regulations on a bonfire. Oh, the irony of that phrase, when we look at the heartbreaking inferno in London. During the election campaign, Theresa May told us she wanted to lead a government that would rule for ALL the country. Long-time Torywatchers laughed out loud, knowing they never have and they never will. Grenfell Tower is a big, ugly, smoking symbol of the Tory’s callous lies. A symbol made even uglier by news that May’s chief of staff Gavin Barwell sat on a report as housing minister which warned that such tower blocks were vulnerable to deadly fires. He didn’t care, just as the local Tory council and his Government didn’t care. Because all they cared about was cutting council budgets, fire brigade budgets, social housing budgets, safe in the knowledge that if the worst happened, it wouldn’t be their family left devastated, but the powerless ones at the bottom who don’t count. Still, next week the vellum will be ready and ancient pomp and circumstance will take over Westminster as Her Majesty reads out May’s selfserving agenda, leaving many of those landlord Tory MPS teary-eyed with patriotism. But they’ll never shed enough tears to wash the blood off their hands.