Three years after David Cameron promised “a bonfire” of regulations, the Grenfell Tower burned down with the loss of 72 lives, because greedy contractors had been allowed to fit a cheap cladding which they knew was highly flammable.

For me, the most powerful moment in Grenfell: in the Words of the Survivors is when the actors stop speaking to listen to a video of Cameron promising an end to regulatory “burdens on business.” Of course Cameron, whose personal wealth is estimated at over £50 million, lives in a safe home. Cutting corners is only for the homes of the poor.

An internal memo in the company that made the cladding noted that, even though it was highly flammable, they could still sell it “in countries whose regulations are not so restrictive.”

It would be nice to think that Conservative politicians stopped demanding deregulation after the Grenfell fire. Sadly not: it turns out that deregulation is one of the “Brexit benefits” we are expecting. 

As recently as last month, former Conservative Party chairman Sir Jake Berry (the “Sir” comes courtesy of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list) told Newsnight:

“We can either be a high tax, high regulation country, a bit like our European neighbours. That works, but it doesn’t work if you’re outside the European club. I think when we made the decision to leave the EU back in 2016, part of that, that cry led from the north of England, was, let’s do things differently in Britain, let’s be more globally facing, let’s be a lower tax, low regulation, highly competitive economy.”

The theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once said that he did not think he could love anyone who did not want to see Look Back in Anger. I used to think it was a silly remark, but I am not sure I could like or respect, let alone love, anyone who could listen to these wealthy and complacent men sneering at regulation, and not feel a burning anger.

Gillian Slovo’s Grenfell: in the Words of the Survivors comes hard on the heels of Richard Norton-Taylor’s Grenfell – Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry. Personally, I preferred Norton-Taylor’s play, because it was consciously and deliberately not theatrical. It was, literally, an edited version of the enquiry itself, and the direction maintained the static, formal aura of a court. The revelations were the more shocking because they were delivered in an unemotional courtroom manner.

By contrast, Slovo’s work, and the directorial decisions of Phyllida Lloyd and Anthony Simpson-Pike, are elaborately theatrical. We open with a touchy-feely speech about how, any time we feel overcome, we can walk out into the comforting embrace of the theatre staff. Then an actor offers sweets to a few members of the audience. (I got one. I couldn’t get the wrapping off, and it lay in my pocket throughout the first act.) I’ve no objection to offering sweets to the audience, but I ought to be able to discern some dramatic purpose.