If only the Grenfell Tower residents had known about the magic money tree the Queen took from this morning

Politics has been filled with magic money trees recently, since Theresa May first drew our attention to them during a Question Time conversation with a concerned nurse. “There isn’t a magic money tree we can shake that suddenly provides for everything people want,” she said the audience member, who had expressed materialistic and childish concerns about her wage being cut in real terms when all she does is fanny around deciding whether people live or die all day. May was right, of course: you can’t always get what you want, like safe housing regulations or fire escapes or NHS funding or proper salaries for doctors and nurses or a good deal on social care, but sometimes you get what you need, like £1bn for a confidence and supply voting arrangement with the DUP. And it’s up to a prime minister to make those difficult decisions.

Of course, when Tories deny the existence of something, they’re usually signposting that it does exist and they’d rather the general populace didn’t know about it, so most of us started paying attention the minute that magic money tree was mentioned. And – lo and behold! – we started seeing evidence of its existence everywhere. Today it crept back into the news agenda with the announcement that the Queen is about to receive a £6m pay increase from public funds.

“Whatever do they need that for?” I hear you cry, and I say to you: private jets! International travel! Spreading the British brand far and wide! Undoing all the trouble your stag night in Malaga caused for the reputation of Her Majesty’s fair land by transporting moneyed pensioners in fancy dress around various tropical destinations on red carpets! Isn’t that worth a chunk of your pay cheque, when you think about it really, really hard? Won’t that make the world respect us?

The cost of the royal family’s official travel (jets and carpets) last year went up by £500,000 to £4.5m, which they probably accrued by cutting back on avocado toast anyway. And, as Sir Alan Reid, Keeper of the Privy Purse, pointed out on BBC News this morning, “The bottom line is the Sovereign Grant last year equated to 65p per person, per annum, in the United Kingdom. That’s the price of a first class stamp.”

It’s wonderful, isn’t it, that for merely the price of a first class stamp, the entire country can keep one elderly woman and her relatives in permanent wealth and luxury for the entirety of their lives? Imagine if we’d been throwing away that same amount on things like proper renovations for Grenfell Tower, where around 600 people lived, none of whom had ever contributed to Britain’s overseas reputation by taking obscure gifts to foreign dignitaries in their lives. They might not have ended up perishing in a death trap, of course, but what would that have done for British interests? This truly is where one learns the meaning of the term “value for money”.

This is particularly important to note when considering that a large chunk of the money we’re paying out to the royals at the moment is for extensive repairs and refurbishment at Buckingham Palace, which are estimated to ultimately cost £369m. In fact, the cost of replacing doors on the orangery at Windsor Castle alone cost £1.2m this year. Sometimes you have to spend, and sometimes you have to save. And where the British taxpayer saved, in the same year, was in the decision to use cladding on Grenfell Tower which was “the cheaper and more flammable of the two options”, as found by a recent investigation. It was £2 cheaper per square metre. The saving was around £5,000.

Residents repeatedly raised concerns about the renovations which were done in the tower block after the council decided to pull out of a contract with Leadbitter, a company which would have charged £1.6m above the council’s budget, and go with Rydon instead, who promised they could carry it out for millions less. They worried about poorly insulated gas pipes and oddly placed boilers. And they repeatedly demanded to know from their landlords why their concerns about fire exits and a lack of sprinklers had been ignored.

If only they’d gone down to Buckingham Palace – which is, in fact, only four miles away from Grenfell Tower – and given that money tree Theresa May knew about a good old shake. Perhaps, if they’d taken such affirmative action, they’d still be here today.