Duncan Smith blasts Tory cynics
Tory Iain Duncan Smith has attacked colleagues who “ousted” him as party leader, claiming they failed to grasp his social justice policies.
Mr Duncan Smith was ousted as Conservative Party leader after he narrowly failed to gain the required 83 votes in October’s leadership ballot.
He received 75 votes of support from parliamentary colleagues, with 90 Conservative MPs expressing no confidence in his leadership.
In the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conferences journal Briefing, Mr Duncan Smith – the self-proclaimed Quiet Man of British politics – questioned the astuteness of Tory MPs who missed the point about social justice.
He said the experience was akin to “shining a pencil torch into a dark void.”
Mr Duncan Smith said Tory rank-and-file members were more sympathetic and better able to understand his goals.
“All politics now needs a dose of reality and the Conservative Party needs desperately to understand the missing bit of the equation which is that social justice should be a Conservative cry,” he said.
Mr Duncan Smith warned the party not to fall under the sway of spin and the “metropolitan media.”
“I hope they don’t just reach for the comfort blanket and say all we have to do is go back to the things that are tried and tested for the metropolitan media when that is part of the problem.
“I don’t regret what I did, how I did it, or why I did it one little bit. I have challenged my party and that was right. I hope others will now go on to pick up that challenge,” he said.
And in a message to journalists and politicians suspicious of the employment of his wife Betsy as a secretary – a fact presently the subject of an investigation by parliamentary standards commissioner Sir Philip Mawer – Mr Duncan Smith said: “If you want to attack me, attack me, but don’t for God’s sake use my wife.
“That was the bit I had the greatest level of anger about, even though she coped fantastically.
“She is tougher than all these people. She is stronger than the whole of the parliamentary party plus all of these journalists put together. She would make them look pretty weak.”
