Tough Times at the Trough

One of the least appetising things about the Grenfell Tower tragedy, apart from its distraction of the populace from the Trooping of the Colour, is that certain elements will insist on using it to gain political capital. The residents of Grenfell Tower have had their homes burned, their friends and neighbours killed, their concerns ignored and their safety endangered; their re-housing is in doubt and the Prime Minister has no time for them, and yet Jeremy Corbyn, Sadiq Khan and a few other extremists have had the nerve to go out there and make them angry. The Imperial Haystack and some of its chums in the scumbag press have been caterwauling about the unscrupulous cynicism of it all, as compared with the local council which seems to be rising above the fray by treating the whole affair with Bullingdonian insouciance. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Expenses-claiming Conservative Party, invigorated by its recent electoral triumph, is morally indignant at the dead-eyed warden's inability to wring sufficient advantage from this near-terroristic unificatory opportunification. "We have a really difficult problem inside the Commons and tough times with this sort of emergency coming up outside," mourned a former minister who apparently declined to be named, perhaps for fear that their noble record of persistent opposition to the bonfire of red tape might count against them. It's a most inconvenient business all round.