London awoke this morning to the news that a blaze had ripped through Grenfell Tower in Notting Hill late last night, leaving at least twelve people dead and several hundreds homeless. The magnitude of the destruction is horrific — truly shocking — and everything must be done — indeed, heart-warmingly, is being done it seems — to provide for the needs of all those who have been hurt and dislocated.

As what remains of the tower block continues to burn, we who watch it do so cannot afford to shirk the difficult issues at the heart of this disaster; we cannot reasonably give in to pleas not to ‘politicise’ what occurred, for it was nothing if not fundamentally ‘political’. For example, residents of the property had repeatedly told the local council — controlled by Tories — that living conditions in the building were ‘dangerous’ and that it was not up…