Duncan Smith blasts ‘dictator’ Blair’s reshuffle
Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith has lashed out at the ongoing Government reshuffle, accusing the Prime Minister of acting like ‘some sort of overblown dictator’ with his sudden rearrangement of Government Departments.
Mr Duncan Smith declared, ‘The prime minister has behaved outrageously. Constitutional change is a serious matter and should be kept apart from yet another botched attempt to paper over the cracks in his warring cabinet’.
He accused Mr Blair of cronyism in installing his former flatmate Lord Falconer in the new but as-yet undefined Department of Constitutional Affairs, apparently abolishing the offices of Lord Chancellor, Scottish Secretary and Welsh Secretary in so doing.
However, it has been confirmed that the office of Lord Chancellor will continue – until its replacement is legislated for – and confusion now reigns as to whether Alistair Darling and Peter Hain are actually Scottish and Welsh Secretaries (respectively) or whether they will simply speak for those parts of Britain in the Commons, under Lord Falconer’s auspices.
‘He should understand that the constitution is not his personal plaything and that it belongs ultimately to the people of this country’, the Opposition leader complained, warning ‘I am not going to mirror these in the Shadow Cabinet’.
Indeed, earlier today, maverick Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews blasted Lord Falconer’s appointment.
He complained, ‘It is completely wrong for Charlie [Lord Falconer] to say he should be judged on his merits. His merits are enormous, but it doesn’t overcome the single fact that he is not elected, he is a creature of patronage and is not answerable to the House of Commons’.
Meanwhile, Downing Street remains silent on the remainder of the reshuffle.
It is widely expected that a major shake-up of junior ministers is planned.
