The return of IDS

wrinkled weasel

This phrase in the Telegraph article, (a Gove quote) leapt off the page:
"the value of liberal learning"

Anyone in doubt about the value of liberal learning should consult speech by Cardinal Newman:

"if, as I have allowed, this Liberal Knowledge does not benefit the body or estate, it ought to benefit the soul"

(source: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/discourse5.html)

Since the idea of learning has of late been distilled into at best, a set of instructions, and at worst, the ability to plagiarise at will, perhaps Gove's plans for the revival of a liberal education may, with its "benefit to the soul" create a few more Wilberforces and few less Ballses.

blooKat

You all seem to live in a strange world where the sheer scale of the economic catastrophe has yet to penetrate.

Do wake up.

2trueblue

IDS comes across as a serious man and as you say the brief needs someone of his standing and calibre.
If the Tories get in he would be a great choice as he has put so much into this area already. He has a wealth of knowledge, gravitas, understanding, and empathy that would be beneficial in pulling it all together.

canonalberic

The word "I" appears more frequently in this article than in a speach of Obama's - very revealing.

BrianSJ

The iron law of evaluation is that "the expected value of any net impact assessment of any large scale social programme is zero"
Peter Rossi

Michael Booth

Children and Social Justice? Please can't we just go back to a Department of Education and let it focus on... why, education I guess!

Vulture

"Cameron won't want that slap-head ruining the school photo of his first Cabinet". Doesn't that one sentence tell us all we need to know abt the pathetic apology for a politician currently leading the disaster that is today's Tories?

The fact that Dave judges IDS's competence and character on the shiny surface of his skull rather than on what lies beneath is testimony enough to his vacuous PR idiocy.

On that basis Dave would have kept Churchill out too. But then Churchill would not have been seen dead in team Dave.

David Ossitt

Michael Booth

“Children and Social Justice? Please can't we just go back to a Department of Education and let it focus on... why, education I guess!”

Michael Booth’s comment; is very much to the point, if David Cameron wants the public to think that he is serious in mending broken Britain, he should reinstate all of the traditional departments of government and get rid of all of the silly pompous self-aggrandising job titles.

David Ossitt

Fraser.

"Cameron won't want that slap-head ruining the school photo of his first cabinet" said one Shadow Minister to me, when we discussed IDS's return,”

Fraser please name this stupid prat.

David Galea

"The word "I" appears more frequently in this article than in a speach of Obama's - very revealing."

You mean speech? Your spelling error is very revealing. Did you expect the writer to relate a personal anecdote in the third person? Is your suggestion an unfounded accusasion of narcissism in the writer?

denis cooper

Pity that he's strayed into talking about "social justice".

Social cohesion, yes, and justice for each individual within society, yes, but not "social justice".

Border Reiver

Welfare state reform will require an over-haul of the whole political economy of the UK.

Yes, it needs a figure like Beveridge or Wilberforce to tackle and expose how a system meant to be a blanket against the hard knocks of life has been smothered by a miserable under-class and a mutually parasitic bureaucracy.

Whether a lone Frank Field or IDS could take on that Leviathan alone is doubtful. He or she will need a cabinet and Prime Minister united in moral urgency. It will need a cultural and economic revolution.

Keith Joseph failed politically because he asked some pretty scary questions, about teen pregnancy, for example.

Perhaps, imperfect as it is, the current balance between citizen, state, market and law is natural? Perhaps as they say here in the Borderlands,with a shrug of the shoulders, "It's aye been", it ever been, it's just the way things are.

These unemployed men sit with their beers below pictures of men in cloth caps sitting in the same bar a hundred years ago. Sturdy chaps who mainly worked in the textile mills. They are sadly closing and flying away to China and India. However, a false nostalgia, for a false halcyon is unwise.

Nevertheless,any serious welfare reform will require job creation and tax relief. Regeneration will take generations.

If this tragedy was a comedy it would be a hybrid of Rab C Nesbitt and Yes Minister.

I would agree with Fraser that Ian Duncan-Smith is the best man for the job on the Tory benches. He'll be up against alot of vested interests and inertia.

There will still need to be a welfare state, just not an immoral and unproductive one. It will take a brave and persistent man,or woman to revolutionise its provision.

I fear that government forces way out-number those of free-trade and liberty. On this economic terrain it will be a hard battle to fight, but one which is worth fighting. Freedom!

P.S. Maybe all MPs should be made to experience a week on a housing estate in jail etc in their constituencies.

Willie de Peepul

Vulture
January 31st, 10:34am

"Cameron won't want that slap-head ruining the school photo of his first Cabinet". Doesn't that one sentence tell us all we need to know abt the pathetic apology for a politician currently leading the disaster that is today's Tories?

No, it doesn't. All it tells us is that the unknown speaker is unwisely concerned with appearance over substance. It says nowt about CMD, although at this late stage of the game I'm worried about two things:
1) why does he feel the need to be so tentative; after so many years as leader he should by now have the courage to know what he wants to achieve, and how, and to shout about it!!!
2) Why is he so timid about letting his attack dogs off the leash? Surely they're close enough "on message" (to use that appalling Blairism) to be let out on their own without fear of them putting their paws in their mouths. They're going to need battle-hardening; it's getting late to start doing it.

Fergus Pickering

Hague is bald, none balder. Grayling is bald. Pickles is bald. What is this crap?

Vulture

@ Willie:
1) I don't quite agree with you, Will. Dave has filled his Shadow team with clones of himself - there isn't a real Tory amongst them with the possible exception of Fox.
The unnamed speaker was merely parroting His Master's Voice - why else isn't IDS in the Shadow Cabinet? I'm afarid it tells me lots abt Dave and his agenda.

2) He's so tentative because he doesn't truly believe in anything - except his own advancement. Those posters who bewail the lack of passion are right. But we must understand that Dave, behind his bland, buttery, airbrushed smoothness is a nullity. Nichts. Rien. Nada. Zilch.
He may have the hair, but he ain't there.
There is no 'there' there.
As Sam Beckett would have said:
'Nothing to be done'.

Bill (Scotland)

It appals me that mediocrity known as Iain Duncan Smith is being relied upon by a future Conservative government to fill any official role. I really want to vote Conservative, but having people like him on board leaves a decidedly sour taste in my mouth. He was such a successful Leader (not) of the Party, wasn't he?

John

vulture

This is Sunday. Are the Labour Party paying you double-time and a half?

Amanda in America

That's great, Mr Nelson, but I've got an even better idea:

Get rid of Cameron and put IDS back in his place.

Then we'll have a real Conservative leader, and the party can start to follow suit.

Amanda in America

Fergus Pickering:

I'm assuming that you mean 'what is this crap about "beware the bald man"'? In which case I agree with you.

It shouldn't matter a damn how much hair one has or has not, but of course the iron rule of modern politics is 'no beards'. You can be Arch of Canterbury with one but that's only as political a job as Rowan Williams unfortunately wants to make it.

As for the rest, I like the 'no beard' rule. Most men in my opinion look better without beards. Abraham Lincoln looked awful in his, and he had such an interesting face otherwise....

mitcheltj

While we are on the subject of unlikely comebacks, howabout David Davis as the Secretary of State for Climate Change - who'll offer me 100-1?

David Lindsay

He may not have had the wit to oppose the Iraq War, but this great campaigner for social justice and national sovereignty has long been on record as not caring which party implements his ideas, as long as they are implemented. He belongs in the Cabinet. It is just a pity that that would be a Cameron Cabinet, mercifully unlikely to happen anyway.

Sir Arnold Robinson

David Galea

Spot on. Canonalberic is clearly one of the legion of blog contributors who think they are able to undermine the lead poster by making some banal or pseudo-intellectual comment based on nothing more than his or her own stupidity.

Steve Patriarca

This is surely a perfect opportunity to restructure the Orwellian department for Children, Schools and Familes? Whatever was wrong with an education department? - and preferably a very small one which does not interfere too much in schools! Then IDS could lead a new department for children and families - though much of this is none of the Government's business - so again it would need to be smaller and more focused on the provision of welfare and social services for children. Above all this would allow the Tories to focus on 'education education education' - and paradoxically work on withdrawing Government from as much of it as possible!

Informed Giant

You're such a bore Fraser

Tim Carpenter LPUK

"he will be given a Department for Children and Social Justice"

This speaks volumes about a future Cameron government and how little will change.

"Social Justice" is an extrapolation of "social rights" which, as JS Mill rightly said, are "monstrous".

"social justice" is just a fig leaf to give a veneer of credibility for Authoritarian, special interest pandering and influence, an attempt to project as universal the views of a self-appointed elite.

robert hagan

The quiet man is coming again - God I hope not