Tom Richmond: Damned if she does, damned if she doesn't, stop the witch-hunt against Theresa May over Grenfell Tower tragedy

If she had sought to meet victims in front of the TV cameras, she would have been accused of grandstanding to shore up a premiership in peril.

If she had showed her true emotions – and cried in public – she would have been accused of lacking leadership at a time of national crisis.

And if she had offered victims £50m, rather than £5m, she would have been accused of buying off the victims to diffuse their understandable anger.

If anything, the PM and the country were too trusting of those statutory agencies who were slow to respond to those left destitute and penniless.

I, for one, have more faith in the Prime Minister’s promised public inquiry because of the sympathetic and skilful manner in which she was the one Home Secretary who strove to overcome the Hillsborough miscarriage of justice.

Just because people have lost faith in her over her misguided general election – a monumental misjudgment – does not justify the venom of the abuse.

Grenfell Tower, the worst catastrophe in Britain in terms of loss of life since the fateful 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground, is the tragic culmination of decades of negligence by the political classes.

The sight of the charred shell of a building, a tomb in the sky, will cast a long shadow over a shellshocked country for years to come, even more so after it emerged the cheap cladding used to improve the block’s aesthetic appearance should have been banned if building regulations had been properly applied.

And while Mrs May has admitted that the initial response was inadequate, it doesn’t make her a ‘murderer’ – the preposterous claim made by protesters as she was sped away from a tense meeting with families.

I don’t know if the M-word was screamed by a victim or one of the Labour / Momentum activists exploiting the tragedy, but I would commend the following words which could not be more pertinent:

“Four years ago a coroner made recommendations about sprinklers being installed in all tower blocks; to date nothing has been implemented in legislation. It seems to me that those responsible for these matters need to act with much greater expedition given the catastrophic events in west London.”

They were written in a letter to The Times newspaper by Michael Oakley, the senior coroner for North Yorkshire Eastern Area, and preceded by remarks about how it took 13 years for relevant legislation to be passed following recommendations he made following “an inquest into deaths in a building in Scarborough in multiple occupation”.

This is critical. Governments, past and present, have been complacent. Though Mrs May could, quite possibly, be Prime Minister of a Government charged with corporate manslaughter, this has been a disaster waiting to happen since this 23-storey ‘fire trap’ was constructed in the 1970s.

Poorly designed with inadequate fire exits, politicians and bureaucrats repeatedly played ‘lip service’ to safety concerns – and it has taken this tragedy to shake them out of their comfort zone.

Where to begin? By all accounts, there was no fire safety certificate because Tony Blair’s government chose to put the onus on landlords to carry out risk assessments. This was long before the austerity that Labour now complains about.

When new measures in 2007 compelled all new buildings over 30 metres in height to be fitted with sprinklers, the rule was not applied to existing blocks – ironically the buildings least likely to be compliant with the most up-to-date safety standards.

And when London coroner Frances Kirkham recommended the retro-fitting of sprinklers following the 2013 inquest into six people who died in a blaze at Lakanal House in Clerkenwell in July 2009, Sir Eric Pickles – the then Communities Secretary – placed the onus on local councils, social landlords and fire and rescue services.

Then there is the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council. Despite having £270m of financial reserves, leader Nicholas Paget-Brown boasted in his budget speech this March about how his authority had “continued to drive economies, to protect frontline services, to manage our property portfolio as dynamically as possible and to bear down on costs. We are getting good at doing this”.

So good that his council was not prepared to install sprinklers and fire-resistant cladding that might have given victims a better chance of survival.

These cumulative failings – and many more – are matters for the ensuing public inquiry which will expose where culpability truly falls, rather than the current witch-hunt.

In the meantime, the priority now should be supporting the victims, evaluating the safety of all high-rise blocks and delivering the “greater expedition” – and urgency – rightly demanded by North Yorkshire’s vastly experienced coroner.

Dozens of lives have needlessly – and tragically – been lost because party politics has been, and continues to be, put before public safety. This must end.

If Theresa May’s premiership survives long enough, let her be judged on what she now does in response to this scandal of all scandals, in ensuring that safety standards are applied rigorously and regardless of cost.

It’s the least that the Grenfell Tower victims deserve.

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