Grenfell and the Limited Reach of Equality within the UK Constitutional Order

Grenfell demonstrated the existence of deep inequalities in British society. Across the UK, inequality shapes lives – and, as Grenfell shows, also often selects for death. And yet equality – or, to be more precise, the principle of equality of status – is widely acknowledged to be a fundamental value of the UK constitutional order, receiving extensive legal protection via instruments such as the Equality Act 2010 and Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This paper analyses the disjuncture between these legal and constitutional commitments and the raw inequality exposed by Grenfell. It argues that this disjuncture is generated by the obscuring of the socioeconomic dimension of inequality within UK political and legal discourse. It concludes by exploring ways of challenging the limits of the principle of equal status, as currently understood within the UK constitutional order