Iain Duncan Smith. Photograph: Getty Images
In today's Daily Mail is a piece in the defence of Iain Duncan Smith against the left. Well, that's what the headline says it is - "Iain Duncan Smith Hits Back At The Left". But start reading the piece itself and you begin to see the defence is rather double-edged. More of a skewering, really than a defence. Read on, and you realise the piece is actually a masterclass in the art of damning by faint praise - these people know what they're doing, by God, and they're doing it well. Get to the end, and your thoughts have actually come full circle - the piece IS hitting back at the left - it's showing the left how it's done. The left, the piece suggests, have been trying their hardest to demonise this man, and they've got nowhere. Here though, it seems to continue, is how to do it. This, right here in your vegan, roll-up stained hands is the definitive template for taking down a Tory MP. Let's just break it down again, for those slower lefties at the back:
First, ignore any defence of Iain Duncan Smith that might actually work - his principles, his intelligence, or the difficult nature of his job - or if you have to just give them a passing mention. Focus on his poverty. Yes, make a real case for this now rich man having at one point been poor (although he wasn't actually that poor).
Second, when bringing up the time he was poor, be careful to stress the ways in which he was better off than the average benefits claimant. For example, that he had somewhere to live, free of charge:
During those days of hardship, he would leave the house each morning and go looking for work, only returning in the evening after his future wife, Betsy Fremantle, had arrived home from her secretarial job.
The honest truth is that I lived illegally with Betsy in the bedsit, trying to pretend I was not there. I didn’t have any money, which is why I tried to avoid the landlady,’ recalls Duncan Smith.Point out exactly why he makes an easy target now, and then pair that with a comically weak defence:
Fortunately for his enemies, he makes an easy target because he lives today in a £2 million 16th-century house in acres of farmland in Buckinghamshire.
He does not own the house, which belongs to his in-laws Lord and Lady Cottesloe, nor will he inherit it. He moved in a decade ago when Betsy’s parents, who are in their 80s and in frail health, couldn’t manage the property.
The personal vilification we have endured over where we live is outrageous,’ he says. ‘I am not involved in the property and Betsy does not have a financial interest. We don’t get a bean from the farm and have never drawn any income from her parents.’In fact, screw it: you can't have too much lavish description of his wealth (or too much comic bathos to follow):
It was home to Sir Thomas Fremantle, an admiral who served with Lord Nelson in the Napoleonic wars, and whose son, also called Thomas, was a Conservative politician and the first Baron Cottesloe.
Betsy’s grandfather, the 4th Lord Cottesloe, was the unpaid chairman of the Arts Council and instrumental in the creation of the National Theatre. One of the National’s three theatres bears the Cottesloe name.
Duncan Smith says: ‘It is upsetting when they keep on about our privileged lifestyle. When times got tough we adjusted our spending accordingly.’Make sure any points you make in this piece in his defence can be undermined by something you wrote earlier:
Duncan Smith knows the personal abuse will continue and that the Left will continue to exaggerate his wealth. In fact, the only property he owns is a one-bedroom former council flat in London...and from the Mail in 2001:
And for the final flourish, every time you suggest he is poor, make sure you "contextualise" this poverty in the right way. He's poor because he spent all his money from the yacht sale on soufflés, or he's poor because he spent all of his trust fund on skiing holidays, or...
Most of the money from the sale of their Fulham home, after they moved in with their in-laws, was spent on their children’s private education. Their eldest son went to a state primary school and won a scholarship to Eton.Daily Mail, you have done us proud.
New Statesman
