Flames were still visible inside the charred shell of Grenfell Tower when the backlash to the backlash began. “Too much political point-scoring going on about the Grenfell Tower tragedy,” complained one user on Twitter, hours after news of the devastating fire broke. “To politicise Grenfell is completely wrong,” added another. “Anyone trying to make political capital out of Grenfell should hang their heads in shame.”
But politics, even in its narrow sense, is about governance and the distribution of power and resources within a community. Follow any of the threads behind the devastation at Grenfell, or those that have unspooled in its wake, and you tumble head-first into politics – raw, vital and fiercely contested. As David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, observed: “If burning in your home is not political, I don’t know what is.”
For as long as humans have built cities, those cities have been shaped by fires – and their manner, victims and aftermath have always been inextricably bound up with the political order of their day.
