After Grenfell Tower Fire, U.K. Asks: Has Deregulation Gone Too Far?<br />The ideal championed by the postwar Labour health minister, Aneurin Bevan, was of a place "where the doctor, the grocer, the butcher<br />and farm laborer all lived on the same street," and according to Pilgrim Tucker, a housing campaigner, in 1979, 20 percent of the richest 10 percent of Britain’s population lived in social housing.<br />Only 29 percent of Britons favored further cuts in public spending, down from 35 percent 10 years ago,<br />and 48 percent said taxes should rise, compared with 32 percent a decade ago.<br />Over time, the nature of social housing changed, as some apartments simply became private rental properties — including an unknown number<br />in Grenfell Tower itself — though their maintenance was controlled by the local council through a nonprofit management agency.<br />Private companies were required to use "authorized inspectors" for fire safety, but, as Mr. Freedland pointed out, they worked for builders and developers, and "there was a classic conflict of interest." Here the two trends of saving money and deregulation come together: The council had recently spent some $11 million on Grenfell Tower to insulate apartments and cut energy costs, using cladding<br />that was approved under existing building regulations.<br />Grenfell Tower had such impact because it symbolizes for many in Britain the retreat of the state, visible in badly maintained social housing<br />and the failure to build more social housing." Britain is having another chapter in the central debate of the capitalist era: What are the proper roles of the state, the market and the individual?<br />During the campaign, Mr. Corbyn and Labour called for renationalizing the railways, the water supply<br />and some utilities, spending much more on social services like the National Health Service and social benefits and ending tuition fees at universities.
