In June of last year an inferno in a 24-storey block of public housing flats in southwest London shocked the world. Seventy-one people died in Grenfell Tower, with another seventy injured in one of the worst tragedies in modern British history.

The days that followed saw an avalanche of criticism directed at authorities for neglect of the building, in particular for the recent renovation which had placed highly flammable cladding around its exterior. The local Tory-run council of Kensington and Chelsea, responsible for the Grenfell Tower block, saw numerous protests.

Just days before the fire, Emma Dent Coad had been elected Labour MP for Kensington. Her upset victory in an area often caricatured as affluent was one of the most unexpected results of Jeremy Corbyn’s election surge, unseating the Tories for the first time in decades. Tragically, it didn’t take long for the deep inequalities in the borough which had propelled her to victory to become a national talking point.