DAILY MAIL COMMENT: How many must die before they act?
The comparisons between the Grenfell fire and Lakanal House in Camerbwell, which caught fire in 2009, are frightening
In tower blocks all over the country tonight, few will sleep easily in their beds. After the horrific fire in West London, our first thoughts are with the victims, the bereaved and the families of the missing.
We think, too, of the heroism of the emergency services and the efforts by neighbours and others to relieve the suffering of the terrified and distraught.
But though recriminations must wait until the full facts emerge, it is clear that contractors, councillors and ministers face profoundly disturbing questions.
After the blaze that killed six in a South London block in 2009, it should have been unthinkable that this could happen again.
But eight years on, the similarities are frightening. Like Lakanal House in Camberwell, Grenfell Tower had recently been refurbished, raising suspicions that corners had been cut.
Indeed, the fire seems to have been intensified by polystyrene-like external cladding, a cheap cosmetic alternative to full refurbishment or rebuilding.
As in 2009, questions are being asked about non-existent sprinklers, inadequate alarms and lethal advice to residents to stay in their flats.
And as then, the early signs are that the fire may have been started by a faulty electrical appliance – one of millions still awaiting recall.
Why were lessons not learned? Why were residents' warnings repeatedly ignored? Why were MPs' and safety officers' urgent recommendations allowed to gather dust?
Whatever the truth, the priority now must be to make every neglected tower block safe – so everyone can sleep without fear.
The real extremists
With sickening hypocrisy, Labour MPs protest against Theresa May's talks with the Democratic Unionist Party, holding placards demanding: 'Drop the DUP deal.'
This paper does not recall such demonstrations when Gordon Brown sought a deal with the DUP in 2010, or when Ed Miliband did the same in 2015.
But hypocrisy aside, they do the Northern Irish party a huge injustice when they condemn it as an extremist, gay-bashing sympathiser with Protestant terrorists.
There is no shame at all in Mrs May's efforts to deal with a party representing Ulster's decent, peace-loving majority
Certainly, the DUP represents an old-fashioned brand of conservatism on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. But far from being viscerally homophobic, the party backed a local version of 'Turing's law' which granted retrospective pardons to those convicted of homosexual acts under old laws.
Most unfounded of all is the portrayal of the DUP as the Protestant equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn's friends in Sinn Fein, who hailed bombs and bullets as legitimate means of achieving political ends.
Even under the tub-thumping Ian Paisley Snr, the DUP consistently condemned political violence.
As for its present leader Arlene Foster, whose police officer father was almost killed in a shooting, she has always abhorred terrorism.
No, there is no shame at all in Mrs May's efforts to deal with a party representing Ulster's decent, peace-loving majority.
Most emphatically, the same can't be said for Mr Corbyn's relations with the IRA.
Criminals' charter
Dealing a hammer-blow to Mrs May's efforts to hasten serious foreign criminals' departure from Britain, the Supreme Court finds her 'deport first, appeal later' rule unlawful. No prizes for guessing why.
Ruling that hard-drug dealers from Kenya and Jamaica shouldn't have been sent home without first being given the chance to appeal, the judges found this made it too difficult for them to claim their right to a family life in the UK.
How can we ever rid our country of such undesirables while the Human Rights Act remains on the statute book?