TOMORROW, June 21, is the first day of summer: the longest day. It follows what seems to have been the longest spring. The British spring of 2017 will surely go down in history as one of the country’s most tragic in recent times.

Spring – that season of hope and life – began on March 21. One day later, the Westminster terror attack took place at the deranged hands of Khalid Masood, striking at the heart of our constitution and leaving five innocent people dead – including heroic police officer Keith Palmer. Unsurprisingly, it left a nation in shock. But by the end of spring, it is fair to say that the nation is now reeling.

Twenty-two dead at the hands of another deranged killer in May, when a disaffected young man decided to blow himself and a lot of young people up in the foyer of the Manchester Arena at the end of a pop concert full of excited girls.

Seven more young people were killed on June 3 as they enjoyed a warm evening out in the heart of London around Tower Bridge and the popular bars of Borough Market. Once more, terror had come calling to our streets.

Worshippers mown down as they came out of a London mosque on Sunday night. One person dead - and a live suspect who at the time of writing has not been charged but whose mother has described as “not a terrorist, just a man with problems”.

So many men, with so many “problems”, who have brought so much suffering to innocent people in the spring of 2017.

But while horror at the hands of murderers would become part and parcel of the season just past, more horrific and unimaginable deaths were to come - at whose hands, we don’t yet officially know. It is hard to believe that in 21st century wealthy Britain, scores of people could meet their deaths in a tower block fireball in the heart of our capital city. Entire families wiped out, the pictures being streamed around the world of Grenfell Tower in Kensington blazing while the residents inside died.

The community’s response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy was magnificent; the politicians’ response was not. Prime minister Theresa May – herself already reeling from a disastrous election - reacted in a way which left her wide open to accusations of appearing cold and uncaring. I doubt very much that she was either of those things – but these days public perceptions are all; and Mrs May’s response to the disaster struck a wrong note. So, however, did Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction. While rightly showing up to meet, hug and sympathise with survivors, he should not have allowed this tragedy to be politicised. Calls for the requisitioning of empty properties in London are blatant rabble-rousing politicking at such a sensitive time. Invoking the politics of envy and class warfare is a troubling reaction to a national tragedy.

Surely a more measured response is called for when it comes to housing the displaced of Grenfell Tower. Rather than seizing people’s property, which entirely contravenes Protocol 1, article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (which states “every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions”), a less blatantly political short-term solution could be found while a long-term strategy on the provision of social housing is implemented. Why, for example, cannot the displaced of Grenfell Tower be housed temporarily in the vast swathes of student accommodation now lying empty in London at the end of the academic year? Surely that is a more pragmatic solution than seizing private property, with all the legal and moral pitfalls that entails.

The legacy of the deadly spring of 2017 will last. Questions will be asked – and must now properly be answered – about how we deal with terrorism, both homegrown and imported; and how we deal with housing the disadvantaged in our society. At the moment, it seems all our politicians have been found wanting.