Nigel Farage sacked Reform’s housing spokesman Simon Dudley after he said ‘everyone dies in the end’ while hitting out at regulation following the Grenfell Tower tragedy
Campaigners have said it was “good riddance” after Reform’s housing chief was sacked for sickening comments about the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
Simon Dudley sparked outrage when he whined about safety regulations and said “everyone dies in the end”. Mr Dudley, who was only named Reform’s housing spokesman last month, was blasted for the “offensive and dangerous” remarks.
Families of the 72 people who died branded the remarks “deeply dehumanising” before Nigel Farage announced he had been removed from his role. Former banker Mr Dudley, who previously chaired a social housing group, said in a magazine interview: “Sadly, you know, everyone dies in the end. It’s just how you go, right?”
And he claimed the pendulum had “swung too far the wrong way” on regulation in the wake of the 2017 fire. Keir Starmer branded the remarks shameful as he called for Mr Farage to act. Mr Dudley later apologised for the comment.
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An inquiry said Grenfell Tower had become a death trap due to a chain of failure across government and the private sector. Dangerous cladding accelerated the blaze, with the risk deliberately concealed by the manufacturer.
Giles Grover, of the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign, told The Mirror : “His comments on Grenfell were as offensive as they were dangerous. To say everyone dies in the end is to erase the memory of the 72 lives lost and willfully ignore the systemic failures that caused the fire.
“Grenfell wasn’t an accident. The inquiry was quite clear that those deaths were avoidable as a direct result of successive governments ignoring warnings, deregulating corporate greed and a system that is designed to put profit for people.”
Labour MP Uma Kumaran, whose constituency has the highest number of high-rise cladded buildings in the country, branded Mr Dudley’s comments “disgraceful”.
She said: “When Reform politicians say that “everyone dies in the end” they are spitting in the face of victims and survivors of Grenfell, and everyone else living with the devastating and very real consequences of the building safety crisis.”
Grenfell United, which represents many of the families bereaved by the fire as well as survivors, said the comments were “not just insensitive” but “deeply dehumanising”.
In a statement on Thursday, the group said: “Our loved ones did not simply `die’. They were failed. They were trapped in their homes, in a building that should have been safe, in a fire that should never have happened.
“Reducing their deaths to an inevitability strips away the truth: this was preventable.”
Confronted about Mr Dudley’s comment at a press conference, Mr Farage said he had been removed – but refused to apologise. He told reporters: “He is not a spokesman for the party. That has been dealt with.”
He went on to describe Mr Dudley’s remarks as “frankly rather insulting to a very large number of people”. But asked whether he would apologise for the Reform housing spokesman’s position, Mr Farage shot back: “This is modern journalism, isn’t it?
“Apologise, apologise, apologise, to victims of the Amritsar massacre, et cetera. I don’t think I can say any more than that. What more can I say than I think the comments were, I’ve said, offensive, deeply inappropriate, ill-judged.
“If that isn’t a pretty clear signal, I couldn’t even tell you what is.”
Mr Dudley was a former Conservative leader of Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council. He previously sparked an outcry in 2018 when he called for “aggressive begging” to be tackled ahead of Harry and Meghan’s wedding. He said street begging caused a hostile atmosphere for tourists, adding it could present Windsor in a “sadly unfavourable light” on the big day.
More than 100,000 people signed a petition condemning the remark, and then-PM Theresa May criticised his comments. Like the party leader, Mr Dudley’s background was in finance and banking, with a 30 year career including work at HSBC, Svenska Handelsbanken and Citigroup Global Markets. He also worked on the £16billion purchase of Heathrow Airport Holdings in 2006.
He went on to work for Homes England – the government’s housing and regeneration agency – between 2017 and 2021. This included stints as senior independent director and then interim chairman between summer 2019 and autumn of 2020.
Mr Dudley went on to be named by then-Housing Minister Chris Pincher as chairman of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation – an organisation set up in 2015 to oversee housing and infrastructure in Ebbsfleet Valley, Kent.
He was charged with creating a new garden city with more than 2,000 homes – of which 35% were to be affordable. Mr Dudley also chaired Square Roots – an affordable housing provider set up by residential developer London Square – from 2021 to 2024.
Square Roots declined to comment when approached by The Mirror. Mr Dudley initially shared the interview with Inside Housing magazine on X.
But he later issued an apology, saying: “Grenfell was an utter tragedy and quite rightly prompted a wholesale review and tightening of fire regulations. I said it was a tragedy in my interview with Inside Housing and in no shape or form am I belittling that disaster or the huge loss of life. It must never happen again.
“I reiterate that, and am sorry if it was not sufficiently clear.” Labour Housing Secretary Steve Reed said: “Simon Dudley’s disgusting comments about those who died in Grenfell Tower show what a shameful failure of judgement it was for him to have been appointed as Reform’s housing spokesperson.
“Reform’s first instinct was to defend him, not sack him, and they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into finally doing the right thing. Nigel Farage should apologise to the victims’ families for putting Dudley in such a senior position in the first place.”