IDS' resignation would be a catastrophe

TrevorsDen

Why should IDS resign? The govt NEEDS to do something about benefits and we already have 5 billion of waste and fraud identified.

The costs of implementation have probably been overstated anyway by vested interests. IDS would be daft to resign and others would be daft to force it.

Brogans role at the Telegraph seems to be dedicated to fermenting problems for the Tory party.

Still nice to have problems of govt not opposition, but what really concerns me is doing the right thing for the country and stirring up crap like this does not help.

Gary T W

So much needless speculation, is it really is the silly season already

Gawain

The Treasury has always had stewardship over the country's finances. Throughout my adult life they have allowed and connived in the expansion and deepening of a welfare system that has become the most oppressive and expensive aspects of our national lives. If IDS resigns at the expense of real welfare reform (even if there are up front costs) then one could question the need for such a large Treasury as any government would have become irrelevant !

Dave B

I thought the CSJ (IDS) plans for welfare reform could be done without extra money from the treasury. Didn't they propose several different scenarios, with different price tags?

Dave B

Matthew Sinclair has a good piece on this over at ConHome:

"I think that everyone working on this issue has huge respect for how seriously Iain Duncan Smith is taking the vital task of reforming the welfare system. But we can't just blame the Treasury if he expects to spend his way out of making genuinely tough decisions. "

Cato

If it costs more, it isn't reform.

RKing

If the pope were to resign imagine the state the catholic church would be in?

What a load of speculative CRAP!!

Mycroft

Well said, TrevorsDen. It does increasingly look as if the Telegraph is deliberatley stiriing up trouble. It has form on this. Remember Laws.

Alexander

IDS was dim and disloyal before he became leader; he was dim and ineffective as leader (remember it was due to him that the Conservatives supported the war in Irq); he still dim - with a portfolio that is potentially beyond his capabilities.

Heaven help us all if this government depends on such a dim person for its survival.

yank

Look, guys, to me, this IDS fellow is just another Brit with a hyphenated name... and a politician at that. Tribally, I'm disposed to distrust him.

And yes, the only thing I know about him is watching a couple clips of question time, when Mr. Blair was running circles around his balding carcass (his hairless head likely the only reason I'd even remember any Brit politician outside the PM... well that or any of the real nasty sex scandal guys). As I recall, it was over the war debates, during which he seemed mindlessly servile.

No, it's not a "catastrophe" if he's gone... as he's just one part of the show.

However, it will be a catastrophe if you lot don't gain control of your structural deficit. Be nice if you all went first, and showed us how to avoid an even bigger catastrophe.

JohnAnt

The money IDS needs is a drop in the ocean compared with what the reforms would save year on year for the next decades, by changing the whole remit of and general attitude to 'entitlements'.
The next change in the culture is needed in the public sector itself. The social services, benefit offices and local DHOs are stuffed full of bleeding hearts, covert marxists, and self-serving apparatchiks who need benefit-recipient clients to keep their jobs. In many cases they know of fraudulent abuse, but will not report it - that'd mean one tick less on their client list.

Edmund Jerk

IDS is one of the only good things about this pathetic centrist, liberal government; the fact that one of Cameron's fags on Fleet Street is writing that IDS is expendable means that's what Cameron's inner circle believe: the knives are already out.

SMason

I'm hardly IDS's biggest fan - he doesn't spend enough time talking about the problems of there not being enough good quality jobs for my liking - but even I'd be sad to see him go. He's one of the few members of cabinet who doesn't come across as a shallow careerist (maybe add Clarke, Cable, Hague, and May to that list) - as the post on the site community-links has it:

"[IDS's] plans for welfare reform might be uncosted so far and might never make it past the Treasury, but they do represent a thoughtful and detailed attempt to address some of the more nuanced problems with the benefits system. Cameron’s announcement today, on the other hand, is crude, callous politics of the very worst kind – the age-old trick of bullying those least able to defend themselves to unite the rest in opposition."

Oh I do dislike Mr Cameron (and his New Labour forefathers).

nonny mouse

IDS won't resign. He is winning the argument. But if he did, there are plenty of candidates from the right to restore order.

John Redwood could do it and restore the left-right balance. He would probably make a very good Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if not the great one that IDS is proving to be.

Holly ......

If,if,if.
All sounds a bit IFFY to me.

TGF UKIP

More amusing by the day - who goes first Iain or Liam, then whichever one it is the other than becomes untouchable and similarly will it be Cable or will it be Huhne or perhaps the Scottish nonentity will beat both of them to it.

It all gives me endless fun especially when it all comes about because Dave Steve and George are such a trio of losers.

Leo McKinstry

The real catastrophe for Britain would be the full implementation of Duncan Smith's ill-conceived, costly and ineffective so-called reform plan which will do nothing to end welfare dependency. We already spend an incredible £194 billion on social security yet Duncan Smith actually wants the taxpayer to fork out a minimum of £3 billion more a year, and possibly as much as £9 billion more a year. His supposed savings will never materialise because he has no plan to reduce the perverse incentives that welfare provides towards joblessness and irresponsibility. He says that no one should be penalised for not taking a job. He's got that entirely the wrong way round. We should be penalising those who refuse to take decently paid jobs. Only last week, the boss of a haulage firm in Lancashire revealed that he had offered an unemployed driver a position paying £500 a week, yet it was turned down because the applicant said he would be better off on benefits. Duncan Smith's expensive scheme will do nothing to address that. What we have to do is end lifelong entitements, introduce strict time limits on claims and restore the contributory principle, which Lord Beveridge said should be at the heart of the welfare system. I am filled with despair at how Duncan Smith is portrayed as a radical reformer when he is nothing of the sort. The status quo would be a cheaper option.

Verity

TGF UKIP - Agreed. Agreed.

I am assuminbg it was only money that allowed them to get to the third row, whence they climbed over the backs of seats to get to the first row? Despite not having been voted there by anyone?

David Cameron really is almost more repulsive than Tony Blair. I dunno. Blair had more power. He'd been elected. By morons, yes. But elected.

Dave was resoundingly not elected.

After 13 years of the worst government in the Western world, Dave couldn't get elected in Britain.

Fergus Pickering

Ah, I can comment again. My wife, very bright lady, who voted UKIP last time round, has nothing good to say about this government, EXCEPT about IDS. What's this dim thing? Brown and Blair were clever, right? At least Brown was, a Ph.d. and a first class degree. Lord save us from bright politicians. Maggie had a second class degree and Churchill, a notorious dumbo according to his daddy, didn't have a degree at all. These bright politicos are all over the bloody place. Two-brains Willets - jeeze! Am I bright. Naw. No good as a politician either. Can't stand the electorate, you know.

JR

For better or for worse I consistently said here that IDS is a good bet to resign by October.

And to repeat one more time - the Treasury civil servants are acting on the orders of Osbourne to squash the cost of IDS' plans!! Both Fraser and other members of the Spectator staff have been spun on this point however they are wrong.

Robert Taggart

IDS for keeps !
Even as one of those he has his knife out for (scrounger) one still thinks he must be given a good run at welfare reform. Things can only get better ? well, in welfare they could hardly get worse !
Come and get us IDS.

Stephen Green

As The Economy becomes more capital intensive and less reliant on unskilled labour (which, by the way, includes at least 50% of those leaving Universities in the UK with a degree)an ever increasing proportion of our society can expect to be jobless for life. The only value of this section of society will be as consumers and Industry and Commerce will either have to subsidise its own consumers through taxation or society will have to allow those involved to live in permanent penury in the UK or subsidse their emigration to Van Deimens land.
That's how the Victorians did it with their surplus agricultural population following the Agricultural Revolution.
Have a Nice Day
And to think we are going to have 20 million more of them within the next 20 years!