Long before Boris Johnson stepped through the door of 10 Downing Street, he had brought a wrecking ball through the fire safety infrastructure of Britain’s capital.
Indeed, the effects of the biggest cuts in the history of the London Fire Brigade, pushed through by our new Prime Minister in his time as Mayor, could still be felt on the night of the Grenfell Tower fire.
It angered me to hear Theresa May speak proudly of her legacy on Grenfell in her resignation speech.
As a Tory Prime Minister and Home Secretary, she played a critical role in creating the conditions that led to Grenfell, as well as the abysmal response to it.
In Johnson, we face a successor with the same shameful disregard for public and fire safety.
Johnson’s Mayoralty left the London Fire Brigade in tatters.
A review of the brigade’s resources in 2016 warned against any further cuts to their budget and advised that City Hall “be ready to mitigate any unacceptable negative impacts arising from cuts in frontline resources made by Mayor Johnson”.
From 2008 to 2015, in a time when the overall number of fires in London fell, fire deaths increased,as an under-resourced fire service struggled to meet its target response times.
We saw the death of 86-year-old Raymond Lister in a fire in Islington, a borough that had seen a 60%reduction in fire cover over the previous three years.
Or take the case of 85-year old Choi Yip who died after jumping from his burning third floor Camden flat, while crews took nearly twice the target time to respond due to diminished resources.
In Lewisham, a 60-year old man died in a fire just minutes away from Downham fire station, closed by Johnson two years earlier.
London’s Fire and Emergency Planning Authority had tried to prevent the disastrous cuts, but Mayor Johnson overruled them.
He went on to lie to Londoners, insisting that he had improved fire cover, despite cutting the number of firefighters, fire engines, and fire stations.
When confronted in the Greater London Assembly chamber, he told a Labour Assembly Member to “get stuffed”.
On the night of the Grenfell Tower fire, it took 38 minutes for a high-reaching aerial fire appliance to arrive.
By that time, the building’s flammable cladding had already caught alight.
As part of his attack on fire cover, Johnson had removed aerial appliances from the London Fire Brigade’s pre-determined attendance, the fire engines sent immediately to respond to a fire.
We will never know what could have been, had different resources been immediately available that night.
Firefighters attending the blaze struggled in impossible conditions.
Chronically under-funded budgets dating back to Mayor Johnson have yet to be fully remedied.
In the weeks and months after the fire, the firefighters who responded on the night struggled to access counselling services.
Under Johnson, the number of counsellors available was cut from 14 to just two.
Two years later, the mental health impact of the fire is still felt by firefighters on the ground.
Over a week into his premiership, the Prime Minister has sacked Nick Hurd, the minister responsible for fire and for the victims of Grenfell, but has yet to appoint a successor with this brief.
Hurd was a minister with whom firefighters had clashed.
But there was, at the very least, a Minister of State responsible for the sector.
It will come as little surprise to firefighters that the new Prime Minister is again showing so little regard for public safety.
His time running London begat a string of fire deaths and left a serious dent in the city’s fire preparedness.
We can have little hope that the consequences of his government will be less dire.
What we can hope for is that the legacy of Grenfell will be remembered, and that the thousands of voices who are demanding change, are listened to.
That’s why the Fire Brigades Union launched the Grenfell: Never Again campaign with the Daily Mirror.
And under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, our campaign is more vital still.
We are not going away.
* Matt Wrack is the General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union
