IDS resigned !! Comments ??

[g8ina]

Has he actuially seen the light, has he had a death threat ?

Or is he just protecting his own bottom.

[jim]

My take on it - he's gone pro-Brexit, which set him up in opposition with Cameron and Osborne.

Cameron and Osborne want to make more changes to benefits, which were agreed with IDS (if he wanted to resign over that he could have done it ahead of the budget), but they decided to make him shoulder a lot of the blame. Why not, he's opposing them on Europe?

And he's decided that actually he's not interested in getting flak for someone else's policy, especially when it's partially motivated by their stances on the EU, so he's resigned.

[jwatkins456]

Hah, straight away Cameron abandons the cuts
Weak minded politicians in our government, come on now! We are supposed to be at the forefront of this world, and our leaders can be swayed by a resignation, admittedly a pretty big one here, but it's like primary school! If you don't do this, then I'm leaving!

[Saracen]

My take on it is that the Brexit argument provides a broad context, but isn't what the resignation was about since he already had permission to ignore collective cabinet responsibility in order to campaign according to conscience which would be for Brexit in IDSs' case. Which he was doing. And, arguably at least, with more clout as a senior Cabinet minister than an "ex-".

I'm inclined to take his explanation largely at face value, which is that the major context is rampant deficit and debt which needs to be got under control. Part of that has to be looking at the welfare budget, and making it work better. His ideology from day 1 was to avoid the "trap" in benefits where msny on them couldn't get a job that paid well enough that income earned wasn't either so heavily offset by benefits lost, or even exceeded by benefits lost that the claimant ended up worse off by taking the job, or so marginally better off that it wasn't worth it.

So, partly his thing has been to rejig the system to make the system provide less of a cliff edge and more of a slope. The intent was that it's always worth being in work, if you are able, than not. And that carrot is backed up by the stick, of serious penalties if able claimants won't seriously try to get work.

That is, welfare should provide a safety net to those that need it, not a lifestyle choice paid for by taxpayers.

To a considerable extent, that has been happening, as evidenced by huge increases in numbers employed, and drops in unemployed claimants over several years.

BUT .... he accuses "the Treasury" of going to the well once to often. He accuses them of "salami slicing" at certain groups, most noticably young, low-income working families and in this case, disabled.

His point was that while benefit cuts can be justified in the narrow context of a huge and remarkably persistent deficit, it cannot be justified unless "we are all in it together". He pointed out that despite previous disagreements over targeting of cuts he had gone along with trying to justify selective targeting because of collective responsibility.

However, enough is enough.

When he is expected to, yet again, implement cuts because of Treasury policy, he can no longer do it when he believes the reason is about "self-imposed fiscal targets" .... that is, reaching an artificial surplus by a given time point, not deficit reduction .... and when it is no longer "all in it together" when such cuts are against a backdrop of, first, tax-cuts for the relatively well-off by both capital gains changes and income tax upper band increases, AND a blanket refusal to look at things like perks for well-off pensioners, then it's wrong to be salami-slicing the same poor groups AGAIN.

In other words, doing it because of necessity is one thing PROVIDED it's done fairly, to all. Also, improving the system to improve targeting limited resources at the most needy, and backing state safety net with state assistance for self help, are good. But repeatedly targeting less affluent beneficiaries of welfare while not targeting better off ones at all is not good, and doing it over "self-imposed fiscal targets" is not something he can support.

Given cabinet collective responsibility, he either has to justify measures he believes are Treasury-imposed, because Osborne wants to get his surplus, or .... resign. And he was no longer prepared to do the former, not when he considers it to be from political motivation, not financial necessity.

[ik9000]

good on him. Someone finally standing up to the smug duo gambling with our country. As the BBC puts it -

Mr Duncan Smith says planned changes "not defensible" in Budget benefiting high earners

Quite.

[ik9000]

Has he actuially seen the light, has he had a death threat ?

Or is he just protecting his own bottom.

Well if the papers are correct then pretty much anyone in government has had some form of death threat from those nut-jobs out in the middle east.

[jwatkins456]

Anyone got an opinion on the guy that has now been chosen for his replacement, I follow politics a little bit but I hadn't heard of him?

[ik9000]

Anyone got an opinion on the guy that has now been chosen for his replacement, I follow politics a little bit but I hadn't heard of him?

Presumably that's the point - find a lightweight to fill the shoes so less to detract from the public agenda in the run up to the vote.

[Biscuit]

[peterb]

IDS was a champion for welfare reform, that is proper reform, not cuts, but reform so that it was targeted at those that needed it, but it was a package that was cherry picked and salami sliced by the treasury.

That must have been very frustrating, hence his decision to resign if he felt unable to continue to fight for what he believed in.

I fear that those that rejoice in his resignation may rue the day, as there appears to be no-one in the DWP who will fight for reform, and therefore the welfare budget may be subject to more cuts.

The timing of his resignation is interesting to say the least,min theory, if the budget is rejected by the house, it would force a general election, but I doubt it will come to that.

[The Hand]

There has been tension between IDS and Osborne for a while. I remember Osborne's Tax Credit cuts being a problem for IDS, so I believe there was some real concern from IDS over the disability cuts.

The civil service/Cameron-led EU Remain ministers were turning on the Leave campaign ministers by denying them access to EU related government documents to begin to freeze them out. IDS knew his days were numbered when he backed the Leave campaign, so he decided call it a day on this issue too no doubt.

I'm wondering if Cameron and Osborne knew these disability cuts would be too much for IDS, expecting him to resign knowing it would be he who would take the flak in the media for political posturing over the EU rather than real concern over the disabled. Either that or they are genuinely didn't care or understand the damage that would have been inflicted and IDS's resignation was a happy accident for them and they then just u-turned within hours on the policy.

[Zak33]

IDS should have left a little while ago... I think Cameron was unwise to leave him in tbh.

I'm not sure it's all visible but the bit we can see made it impossible for IDS to stay.

But there's always other stuff we don't know about.

[Smudger]

Hang on, didn't IDS vote for the cuts in disability benefit only a few weeks ago?

[Xlucine]

In light of Corbyn's failure to unite the parliamentary labour party, the conservatives have stepped up to manage the roles of the party in power and the opposition at the same time

[ik9000]

In light of Corbyn's failure to unite the parliamentary labour party, the conservatives have stepped up to manage the roles of the party in power and the opposition at the same time

so they can stuff up the country and comment on how bad they're being all at once?

[peterb]

Hang on, didn't IDS vote for the cuts in disability benefit only a few weeks ago?

He did, but on the basis that there wouldn't be cuts in the higher rate of income tax. The effect of the cuts in the higher rates of income tax in the big picture is relatively low, and one could argue that incentivising those who create the businesses that grow the economy is sensible (when it was raised to 50%, tax revenues fell) but as a PR issue, it is disastrous.

Of course the financial situation would be improved at a strike if we weren't paying large amounts of cash to the EU in exchange for the loss of the right to set our own rate of VAT, among other things.