With the Conservatives currently experiencing inner party turmoil following Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation over the Chancellor’s Budget, there are concerns that in-fighting may soon overshadow the party’s work. However, despite several backbenchers speaking out about their doubts in George Osborne’s ability, not every Tory is so fussed about the growing row.
In an interview with Conservative Home, Nicholas Soames has offered his take on the situation. The Tory grandee says that Duncan Smith’s resignation is simply an ‘inconvenience’ even though the media reaction suggests that there has ‘been a coup by a black African dictator’.
‘This is what my father would have called a kick in the gullet, these are inconveniences, what did Harold Macmillan say, these are little local difficulties. And of course we live in a 24-hour world.
So I read the press today, and you know, I sometimes wonder which country I’m living in. Read the Mail. It’s absolutely fantastic. You’d have thought there’d been a coup by a black African dictator. It’s just absolute f—ing nonsense.’
While Soames promises to have a word with the former Work and Pensions Secretary next time he sees him, he appears to be more concerned with Tory backbenchers like Heidi Allen who have criticised Osborne’s Budget:
‘Some of our colleagues, I mean over the weekend on the television I saw a young man called Mr McPartland, and another woman called Miss Allen, neither of whom I’m conscious of ever having seen before in my life, talking in the most unbelievable terms about the Government.
They completely seem to forget the extraordinary triumphs of the Chancellor on the economy, the Government’s success on the academies, on welfare. What other government since 1948, including Lady Thatcher, has managed to get a grip of the welfare state?’
Still, perhaps it’s the Brexit-backing Tories who have the most to fear from Winston Churchill’s grandson. He has urged Cameron to kick the rebels ‘really hard in the balls’:
‘There are two ways in my view to deal with this. If you have an Alsatian sitting in front of you, and it growls at you and bares its teeth, there are two ways of dealing with it. You can pat it on the head, in which case it’ll bite you, or you can kick it really hard in the balls, in which case it’ll run away.’
Should Cameron continue to find his party divided, he may have no choice but to consider Soames’ advice.
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