Let's not forget that his blustering and blundering leads to a great deal of human suffering
Iain Duncan Smith doesn't check his facts.
Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
Men lie for many reasons:
to boost their ego, to hide their failings and to advance their ambitions. The
sole impressive characteristic of Iain Duncan
Smith – the winch that lifts him out of his otherwise incurable mediocrity –
is his ability to lie for every reason imaginable, even when he knows his
audience must find him out. If he told me that two plus two made four, I'd ask
for a second opinion.
Last week, the work and
pensions secretary announced
on his department's website that he was "very pleased that the supreme court
unanimously upheld" his programme to force the unemployed to work without pay or
lose their benefits. "Ultimately,
this judgment confirms that it is right that we expect people to take getting
into work seriously."
If the judges had Duncan
Smith before them, they could accuse him of the old misdemeanour of
suppressio veri: the suppression of a truth he was duty bound to
disclose. Nowhere in the government's propaganda did Duncan Smith admit that the
supreme court had, in fact, found against him on every ground of appeal he had
raised. Even though he had protected his department's hard line on the young
by rushing through retrospective legislation, the supreme court still hammered
him. The government had not provided "sufficient detailed prescribed
description" of the work placement schemes on offer, the judges said. The
unemployed could not make an informed decision on how best to find work. Their
ruling will help young people Duncan Smith's department had pushed into quack
schemes on pain of losing their benefit. As Public Interest Lawyers, the
rather inspiring firm of solicitors that took on the test case said: "You should
not believe the DWP when it says that the judgment makes no difference.
Jobseekers who have not been provided with adequate information can now seek the
repayment of their benefits."
If you think that such
deceits are the normal stuff of politics, consider the story's sequel. As Duncan
Smith realised he was losing the case, he went on the BBC to denounce Cait
Reilly, one of the claimants who was challenging him in court. Despite
receiving benefits, the 24-year old had refused to work for nothing in
Poundland, he claimed. She was part of "a group of people out there who think
they are too good for this kind of stuff". A "job snob", in other words; a
scrounger, who was not prepared to get off her backside and put in the hours
necessary to secure remunerative employment.
Maybe I am over-sensitive, but I find the spectacle of a powerful old man falsely condemning an honourable young woman distasteful in the extreme. Duncan Smith threw out any allegation that came into his head just to do her down. On second thoughts, that is more than distasteful – it is disgraceful.
As I have mentioned before
, Duncan Smith has form. He claimed that around a million people have been
stuck on a working-age benefit for at least three out of the past four years,
despite being judged capable of preparing or looking for work. His claim was
false. He claimed that his benefit cap had encouraged 8,000 people to find work.
Not true either as the UK Statistics Authority pointed out in a stinging
reprimand .
Why doesn't he give us a
break? The short answer is that his department is falling apart and he has to
spin and bluster to cover the shambles he has presided over. His once-grand
plans for a universal credit to cover the whole country have shrunk
to a pitiful pilot project. Hailed by Duncan Smith and rightwing London as
the incentive that would propel the unemployed into work, universal credit has
become Whitehall's equivalent of a layabout yob: nothing can make it work. His
equally overhyped "reform" of disability
welfare payments looks as if it is going the same way.
In Matthew D'Ancona's history
of the coalition, George Osborne says: "You see Iain giving presentations
and realise he's just not clever enough." He most certainly is not. Yet there is
no pressure from the British right to remove him from office. On the contrary,
Tories acclaim Duncan Smith and Michael Gove as the coalition's two heroes. As
well as bellowing to hide his all-too evident weaknesses, Duncan Smith spins to
encourage his supporters, who, incredibly, still admire him and praise him as a
great reformer.
Conservatives
continue to admire Iain Duncan Smith, nevertheless, for one reason and one
reason only: he is cutting the money going to the poor, the sick, the
handicapped and the young. That's it. That's all there is to him now. And the
right loves him for it.
