Grenfell is simply explained: firms chased profits, ministers sat on their hands, innocents paid with their lives | Peter Apps

Today’s report should make you angry. People died horribly and futures were wrecked because of ideology, neglect and greed

Peter Apps is a contributing editor at Inside Housing and the author of Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen

‘A task that only the government can undertake.” A short, seemingly unremarkable sentence, tucked away on the 225th page of the second volume of Martin Moore-Bick’s 1,700-page Grenfell Tower inquiry report. But it encapsulates in a nutshell the broken political philosophy the preceding pages so graphically outline: a state which stepped back and allowed a ruthless, dishonest industry to regulate itself.

At its heart, Grenfell is a story about human suffering. It is about the 72 victims – 18 of them children – needlessly lost in a tower block fire that could so easily have been avoided. It is about their lost futures, the family members left behind and all the grief and pain and suffering the years of delay in delivering justice and change have piled on to them. But today’s report is also a story about politics, economics and power. It is about the sort of society we have built for ourselves in 21st-century Britain.

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