Two weeks before the publication of the Grenfell Inquiry’s final report, Keir Starmer was taken on a tour of the burned-out shell of the tower in west London where 72 people lost their lives in 2017. 

He spoke of his experience in his address to parliament on the day the report was published last week. “As I walked down that narrow staircase from the 23rd floor, and looked at walls burned by 1,000-degree heat, I got a sense of how utterly, utterly terrifying it must have been,” the prime minister said. 

“It left me with a profound and very personal determination to make the legacy of Grenfell Tower one of the defining changes to our country that I want to make as prime minister. We will deliver a generational shift in the safety and quality of housing for everyone in this country.”