Consequently, the local authorities’ spending has been reduced by 37 percent since 2010, and is expected to fall even further over the coming years. Housing-service budgets partly pay for property-inspection to ensure homes meet basic standards—and they have been slashed by a quarter over the same period. In 2012, a telling pamphlet was distributed to local councils by the department for communities and local government. Entitled “50 Ways to Save: Examples of sensible savings in local governments,” its helpful suggestions for councils highlight the pressures placed on them. The suggestions include: “claw back money from benefit cheats,” “sell services,” “stop translating documents into foreign languages,” “earn more from private advertising,” and do not “routinely spend time and money on Equality Impact Assessments.”

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party’s long-standing and deep-rooted opbposition to state-imposed fire and safety regulations is also likely to have laid the ground for the Grenfell Fire. For decades, Conservatives have harbored a unique disdain for so-called government “red tape” that supposedly stands in the way of British businesses. Whereas the Labour Party was complicit in hollowing out council funding and outsourcing public services to private companies, on this particular score—the state’s failure to ensure that bare-minimum safety standards were met—the Conservative Party will stand all but alone in the interrogation booth.

Cameron’s government sought to loosen the regulations and formalities private firms must comply with, on the premise that this would liberate private developers to build more housing, an area where the country and the capital suffer a chronic shortage. Cameron made this ambition clear wherever he could. Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in October 2011, he declared that the “shadow of health and safety” was “one of the biggest things holding people back. … Britannia didn't rule the waves with arm-bands on,” he quipped. In a January 2012 speech, Cameron then revealed his government’s new year’s resolution “to kill off the health and safety culture for good.” He argued that it had become an “albatross around the neck of British business,” a “health and safety monster” that contributed to “pointless time-wasting.” He wrote an article in the Evening Standard, opining on how it “saps personal responsibility and drains enterprise” and is “smothering” Britain’s “real pioneering, risk-taking spirit.” “We need to realize … that some accidents are inevitable,” he wrote.

This desire to de-regulate industry was not for the sake of the public— it was simply the other side of austerity: The more rules there are to impose, the more government must be there to impose them. Take away the rules, take away the need for government; let business run free. Boris Johnson (another Kensington resident) also wrote in 2009 that “health and safety fears are making Britain a safe place for extremely stupid people.” As the mayor of London between 2008 and 2015, he would then go on to close 10 fire stations in the capital, cutting 27 fire engines and around 600 firefighter posts, with “savings of over £28-million.” In 2014, Conservative MP Brandon Lewis, the housing minister at the time, neatly summed up the Tory stance: “It is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the government, to market fire sprinkler systems effectively and to encourage their wider installation.” Now we know where such blind faith in the market can lead.

Grenfell Tower is a scar on London’s skyline, and it will not fade even when the building is finally brought down. It is a reminder that the wealth of any city or nation is no protection for the safety of its citizens, whether it is fifth, sixth, or first in the rankings. Whatever the immediate causes of the fire, a bundle of government policies lay buried within its walls, so much tinder and fuel for the flames to take light.

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