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Jacob Rees-Mogg has been slammed for suggesting the people who died in the Grenfell Tower tragedy because they listened to the fire brigade’s orders lacked ‘common sense’.

The Tory MP told LBC host Nick Ferrari that the victims would have survived if they’d just ignored what they were told.

He added that he himself would have left the building as ‘it just seems the common sense thing to do’.

A damning report released last week by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, who is leading the Grenfell Inquiry, found ‘many more’ lives could have been saved if the London Fire Brigade (LFB) had abandoned its ‘stay put’ policy sooner.


Mr Rees-Mogg leaving Downing Street this morning (Picture: AFP/Getty)

Instead, residents were told by firefighters to lock themselves inside for several hours as flames engulfed the tower block. It was revealed that 55 of the 72 people who died in the fire were told to remain in their flats.



The document stated that the absence of a plan to evacuate the tower was a ‘major omission’ by the LFB who had ‘gravely inadequate’ preparation for the tragedy.

When quizzed on the report, Mr Rees-Mogg, 50, said: ‘The more one’s read over the weekend about the report and about the chances of people surviving, if you just ignore what you’re told and leave you are so much safer.

‘And I think if either of us were in a fire, whatever the fire brigade said, we would leave the burning building. It just seems the common sense thing to do. And it is such a tragedy that that didn’t happen.’

Smoke and flames continue to burn at Grenfell Tower after the fire on June 14, 2017 (Picture: AFP)

This morning, the Tory MP issued a ‘profound’ apology and said: ‘What I meant to say is that I would have also listened to the fire brigade’s advice to stay and wait at the time.

‘However, with what we know now and with hindsight I wouldn’t and I don’t think anyone else would.

‘What’s so sad is that the advice given overrides common sense because everybody would want to leave a burning building.

‘I would hate to upset the people of Grenfell if I was unclear in my comments.

‘With hindsight and after reading the report no one would follow that advice. That’s the great tragedy.’

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Earlier, his comments were slammed as insensitive by Grenfell victims’ groups who said he should be ‘ashamed’.

Yvette Williams, who chairs the campaign group Justice4Grenfell, wrote for Metro.co.uk and said Mr Rees-Mogg ‘is not fit to be an MP’.

She branded his comments ‘appalling’ adding: ‘His sense of superiority renders him incapable of understanding the horrific choices that the former residents were faced with that night.

‘His inability to show any humanity is intrinsically tied to his colossal wealth and privilege; he is smugly comfortable that he has no understanding or empathy for ordinary members of society.’

She claims Mr Rees-Mogg’s Conservative colleagues were the ones who failed to act on residents’ concerns the tower block in Kensington, west London, was not safe.

Victim support group Grenfell United described the comments as ‘extremely painful’ and ‘beyond disrespectful’.

Grenfell support groups slammed the comments as ‘appalling’ (Picture: PA)

The House of Commons leader also told the radio show that he did not believe Grenfell had ‘anything to do with race or class’ and said: ‘It’s rather sad to raise these types of points over a great tragedy.’



Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report declared the evacuation delay ‘cost lives’, with calls for LFB Commissioner Dany Cotton and other bosses to face prosecution.

Last week Ms Cotton said she regretted causing offence to Grenfell Tower victims by saying she’d change nothing about her team’s response on the night.

She has resisted multiple calls for her to resign, and said the brigade was ‘fully cooperating’ with the police.

Flora Neda, a relative of victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, during a news conference in London last week (Picture: Reuters)

At a press conference after the report’s release, Hamid Ali Jafari – whose father Ali Yawar Jafari, 82, died – spoke of his heartbreak that he was ‘left in the fire to die’.

He said his mother and sisters managed to escape from their flat on 14 June, 2017, but their father got separated from them during the chaos.

Hamid, from Afghanistan, said: ‘My dad brought us to this country thinking we would have a better life, a safe life. Out of the war.

‘Then, I don’t know. We left him in the fire to die.’

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