A covid-19 inquiry will scrutinise the British state
It will be long, complex, and may not change very much
ROCK FEILDING-MELLEN had firm views on the cladding that was to coat Grenfell Tower, a council housing block in west London. “I really don’t like the lime green and champagne combination at the ground floor,” he wrote in an email to colleagues in July 2014. The councillor responsible for housing in the borough recalls only “skimming” a bulletin from London Fire Brigade which he received the same month. Three years later the new cladding spread a blaze that killed 72 people. On May 18th Mr Feilding-Mellen told an inquiry: “I really don’t know what I could have done differently.”
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Trial of the century”
Britain May 22nd 2021
- Britain’s economy is hot but not overheating
- A coronavirus variant is spreading in Britain—but this time is different
- Two unionist parties are under new management
- London is likely to get a swanky new theatre
- Why the best farmland in Britain has become cheap
- Britain’s civil service remains upper-middle class
- A covid-19 inquiry will scrutinise the British state
- How to do foreign policy in a multi-ethnic society
From the May 22nd 2021 edition
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