A few years back, Mr Steerpike wrote a blog entitled ‘How Danny Finkelstein botched the reshuffle‘ – revealing how those around Iain Duncan Smith were furious to see his future in an expected reshuffle being discussed on Newsnight by the Fink. Our joke: that IDS might well have moved to the Justice department has he not heard the Fink talking about the move as if it were a done deal. Today, in his Times column, Lord Finkelstein repeats this story – except he upgrades it from joke to fact.
‘If it wasn’t for me, Iain Duncan Smith wouldn’t have resigned last week as work and pensions secretary,’ he announces to his readers. ‘This isn’t some cute newspaper column introduction in which you learn later that I had nothing to do with it. I mean it’. He then retells the story:
‘Knowing me to be a friend of the chancellor, he leapt to the conclusion that my appearance and knowledge of the offer was part of some plot against him. And the next morning he told the prime minister that he wasn’t being pushed out by me.
He would stay at work and pensions. I took a while getting used to the idea that something so bizarre had really happened, but once I became certain that it had, it made me, let’s put this politely, a little wary of Iain Duncan Smith’s judgment and temperament.’
Mr Steerpike wants to break this gently to Danny: it was a joke. The truth is rather well-known in Whitehall: that evening, Cameron did ask IDS if he wanted to move to Justice. IDS replied that he didn’t, but the Prime Minister asked him to think about it overnight.
He did, and the next morning, he replied that he wasn’t particularly interested in legal reform or being the Lord Chancellor – he’d go if the PM wanted, and return to the back benches, and also appreciated being given the choice. All very amicable. Then IDS said that he did not so much appreciate what he thought was a private conversation about his career being leaked to the press and discussed on Newsnight. End of.
True, his aides were furious at way their boss’s job offer had been leaked, and were defensive about what they saw as Treasury sniping. But the bit where IDS had actually accepted a move to Justice, but suddenly decided against it after seeing the Fink on television? An invention.
At the time, Lord Fink was keen to rubbish Mr Steerpike’s little joke, but over the years – in his head – the joke seems to have grown into fact. Something of which he “became certain”. This is the sincerest form of flattery, and Mr S is honoured to have Lord Fink as a reader. But he really should not believe all he reads.
Still, to save time the next time Danny is stuck for a column intro, he can find all of Steerpike’s stories here.
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