She listened to Grenfell’s bereaved and the acted. Rayner had pure class – our class

“Is everything OK?” I asked. “It’s Angela Rayner… I can’t believe what they’ve done to her,” she said.

Mum reached out because she knows that, in my capacity as an advocate for the Grenfell Next of Kin, I’ve met the former deputy prime minister and housing minister many times. Once, in my defence for missing a family gathering, I mentioned that I was seeing her. To my surprise, my mum recognised the name. “Oh… I like her,” she said.

By the time Rayner assumed her most recent office in July 2024, Grenfell Next of Kin, and everyone affected, had endured seven different secretaries of state for housing under the Conservative government, following the Grenfell tragedy in June 2017, with Michael Gove stepping out and back in on two occasions.

The residents of Lancaster West Estate, where Grenfell stands, were left to navigate their challenges alone, against the backdrop of their own council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, being at the heart of a criminal investigation and a key defendant, with no oversight or protection for the victims. Despite the fact that 72 of its residents had been killed in plain sight, no commissioners would ever be called in by the Tory government to oversee their Tory jewel in the crown, the royal borough.

In July 2024, I started reaching out to the next of kin of 42 of the 72 people who died in Grenfell, telling them we needed to see Rayner, the new minister. Many were sceptical: “How will this one be any different?”

Within two weeks of her taking office, we’d arranged a meeting between Rayner and a large group of mums, dads, children, siblings, partners, grandparents and grandchildren – families of more than half of the 72 people killed. We marched into her office in Marsham Street and we were serious. Rayner listened and when a man who had lost six members of his immediate family placed a photo of them before her on top of a flag, she remained calm, absorbing the trauma and anger. I couldn’t help but recall our last meeting with her predecessor, Michael Gove, who had failed to engage with anyone, instead telling me “let me worry about the money”, when I pointed out that £320m was being squandered away. To which I responded: “With all due respect, minister, it’s not your money.”

Since that meeting with the deputy prime minister in July 2024, we have attended many such consultation meetings. Each time, Rayner’s civil servants steered her away. But she listened. When a father who had lost his son in the fire struggled to articulate his grief, a civil servant tried to usher Rayner out. Knowing how wounded the man would feel by being ignored, I shouted: “No, minister, please listen to him.” She sat back down, allowing the father to find his quivering voice.

You couldn’t help but admire her ambition, energy and pride.

Most of the families’ engagements centred on the future of Grenfell Tower, which has been supported with 5,000 steel props that were being monitored 24/7, at great cost – both financial and emotional – for the families affected, and the nearly 2,000 residents of Lancaster West Estate who live under it.

The former Tory secretaries of state had no appetite to confront this challenge. In this purgatory of indecision, there could be no progress on the Grenfell memorial because, in order to make a memorial, a decision had to be made about the tower itself. Without a decision, the tower had to continue to be propped up and monitored. But, below the surface of the white tarpaulin shroud, it was deteriorating. In May 2021 structural engineers delivered a report urging that the deconstruction of the tower start “no later than May 2022”.

The tower, and what should happen to it, is a deeply sensitive and divisive conversation, understandably. But ultimately this came down to a structural and engineering issue. The civil servants and the royal borough found it difficult to talk about “risk” because to do so would have created demands they did not want to meet. Meanwhile, the tower was deteriorating, with 2,000 people living at its foot. Putting symbolism and emotion aside, the deconstruction of the tower was simply a structural and engineering issue and about “risk”. Isn’t that what responsible government is supposed to be about?

Rayner set about to break his stasis. At one meeting, she noted that “not making a decision is, in itself, a decision”. At that moment, a gentle, quiet, disabled lady who had lived on the 23rd floor for more than 20 years, along with her son and her husband, who had jumped from the window when he could not escape on the night of the fire, spoke up. “No. Make a decision,” she said. “We need closure.”

Many families of the deceased attended meetings with Rayner – daytime, evenings, online, at the weekends. These gatherings were emotional and difficult, but essential, and the families who came made a huge effort to engage.

So, nearly three years, seven ministers, hundreds of millions of pounds late, after the original deadline of May 2022, and only seven months into her tenure, Rayner came to west London to deliver her message that the tower would be brought down, to a charged room. She took the attack on the chin but making a decision about the tower made a big difference.

The deconstruction began this month. The cranes are in place. Each floor is being taken down and transported to another site for respectful burial. She could have made it someone else’s problem, but she did not. This act of courage meant that in July those who wanted to were able to make a last visit to say goodbye in the spaces their kin had faced the horror of that inferno and then perished. A man who had lost his sister in the tower told me after the visit he felt “relieved”. It was “an end of being in limbo, at least”.

At one of our last meetings, Rayner arrived at about 7pm for a meeting that went on until 10pm. She was carrying a plate of curry from table to table as she met the families. She sat down at our table with a woman in her 80s who had lost her daughter, another who had lost her sister, and a third who had lost her husband of 25 years. “How’s your dinner?” I asked her. “Cold,” she said. I imagine she had many cold meals during her last year in office.

I worked out that the Grenfell meetings were around the time she would have been doing the paperwork for her flat in Hove, among the many other issues she was handling. Like a lot of women juggling so much, though none as DPM, she was probably putting herself last. I can’t imagine that Rayner, who had worked so hard to get to where she was, would deliberately put it all on the line for £40,000. She’s not daft.

I can’t say the Whitehall mandarins ever liked my role but I felt Rayner understood advocacy. At one tense meeting I asked if I should leave and she came over to me at the end, held both my hands and said: “Don’t ever leave the room.”

We don’t have anyone like Angela Rayner in our country. Over the years, a lot of the scrutiny has centred around her “class”, her smoking, vaping, tattoos, being a single mum; most of the language has been disgraceful and misogynistic. For years, she’s remained authentic; that is her power. But the truth is, the loss of Angela Rayner from our power base should be a tragedy for us all, whether you agree with her politics or not, because it is a loss with cultural significance. It is a moment that might be lost on the men in suits but not to many of us up and down the country.

You can’t buy class. Angela Rayner had pure class. Our class.

Kimia Zabihyan is advocate for Grenfell Next of Kin

Photograph by Kimia Zabihyan