OUTRAGED CAMERON’S 4-LETTER TIRADE AT ‘FRAUD’ IDS
Tory fury over resignation of Minister who BACKED cuts in disability benefit
FURIOUS David Cameron unleashed a four-letter rant at Iain Duncan Smith over his ‘dishonourable’ resignation, The Mail on Sunday has been told.
Mr Cameron is said to have ‘exploded with rage’ when anti-EU rebel Mr Duncan Smith rejected repeated pleas not to walk out of the Government in a bitter row over disability benefits cuts.
The animosity deepened last
night after this newspaper obtained a letter which Mr Duncan Smith sent to MPs before he quit the Cabinet, endorsing the Budget reforms he now claims to oppose.
Allies of Mr Cameron said the letter shows Mr Duncan Smith used the issue as a ‘fraudulent’ pretext to ‘flounce out’ – and that he had been ‘itching’ to resign for months so that he can fully campaign for an ‘Out’ vote in the EU referendum.
But friends of Mr Duncan Smith fought back, saying he had been ordered to write the letter by No 10.
The Prime Minister reportedly called Mr Duncan Smith a ‘s***’ in a heated 20-minute phone call after receiving his letter resigning as Work and Pensions Secretary early on Friday evening.
There were two phone conversations between Mr Cameron and Mr Duncan Smith. The first, at 7pm, was polite, with the Prime Minister trying to persuade IDS to stay.
It was during the second call shortly afterwards, when it became
PM ‘threw his toys out of the pram’ ‘I can’t see Cameron uniting the party’
clear that Mr Duncan Smith was determined to quit, that the Prime Minister erupted.
Mr Cameron, according to a source, ‘threw his toys out of the pram’ and called IDS ‘dishonourable’ and, later, the expletive.
Mr Duncan Smith told him during the bad-tempered call: ‘You have gone too far this time. You cannot expect me to put up with being undermined any longer.’
A well-placed source said the Prime Minister replied: ‘You s***!’
Mr Duncan Smith said Chancellor George Osborne’s planned cuts to disability benefits were ‘not defensible’ in a Budget which was also benefiting higher-earning taxpayers. In his public response, Mr Cameron said that he was ‘puzzled and disappointed’ by the resignation.
But the day after the Budget, Mr Duncan Smith had defended Mr Osborne’s planned £1billion cuts to Personal Independence Payments given to people who struggle to use the toilet or get dressed.
In a letter to Tory MPs, he said the cuts were needed as ‘this year we are spending around £50billion on support for sick and disabled people, more than the entire £34 billion defence budget.’
One Government source said: ‘The disability benefits cut was Iain’s idea and he was defending it as late as Thursday. He now claims to have resigned over it yet not once did he ask to meet the Prime Minister to discuss his supposed concerns.’
And another insider said: ‘Iain has dressed it up as a principled resignation: it is nothing of the sort. He has had a fit of the vapours over the referendum. He’s been itching to resign for ages and has just flounced out’. A Cabinet source described the resignation as ‘ludicrous.’
Even one of Mr Cameron’s most severe critics, Tory MP Nadine Dorries, declared yesterday that she was ‘stunned’ by Mr Duncan Smith’s resignation, because he had put pressure on her to support cuts to disability benefits last month. ‘If IDS has resigned because the cuts to disability benefit were a step too far, he should have done it before he whipped MPs through the voting lobby,’ she said.
‘If the real reason was the continual stream of spin, lies and fear emanating from No 10 in a desperate attempt to persuade the British public to vote to remain in the EU, then he should have had the courage of his convictions and said so’.
However an ally of Mr Duncan Smith say that he ‘woke up on Friday morning resolved to resign’ over the issue: although he had backed the changes in public, he had privately warned Mr Osborne that they would prove to be toxic. Then, when the furious public backlash started, he felt increasingly exposed.
Critically, a friend of Mr Duncan Smith, said: ‘The Dear Colleague letter [to fellow MPs] was written under orders. He was told, “You have got to go out and sell this policy.”’
Mr Duncan Smith’s Cabinet job was swiftly filled yesterday by rising star Stephen Crabb, who was promoted from Welsh Secretary. Crabb, 43, who has been tipped as a future leader, has the perfect back story for his new job: He was raised in a in Pembrokeshire council house by a single mother who was forced into welfare dependency after splitting from Crabb’s violent father – but she managed to rejoin the workforce by taking a training course.
Employment Minister Priti Patel, who answered to Mr Duncan Smith, had been tipped for promotion in the next reshuffle – but sources indicated that, as a fellow supporter of Brexit, it would have ‘too dangerous’ to move her to the Cabinet. Mr Crabb backs the ‘In’ camp.
Junior Welsh Minister Alun Cairns replaced Mr Crabb at the Welsh Office.
Mr Cameron’s loss of temper on Friday is reminiscent of John Major’s famous ‘bastards’ outburst against rebel anti-Brussels Ministers in his Cabinet in the 1990s.
Another ally of Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘Every third word was an expletive. Iain described it as a “Soames-type outburst.”’ Tory MP Sir Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill’s grandson, is renowned for his colourful invective.
The extraordinary row between Mr Cameron and Mr Duncan Smith has led to fears that the Tories – and the Government – could be engulfed by further turmoil heaped on to divi- sions over the EU referendum. Even after former Tory leader Mr Duncan Smith’s resignation, there remain six Cabinet members – including Boris Johnson – who have defied an increasingly exasperated Mr Cameron by campaigning for the UK to quit the EU.
A Tory grandee said last night: ‘The Conservative Party is becoming ungovernable. I can’t see how Cameron and Osborne can unite it, regardless of the result of the referendum.’
Downing Street went on the attack yesterday to try to limit the damage from the affair, sending Defence Secretary Michael Fallon on to the airwaves to say it was ‘puzzling’ that Mr Duncan Smith had resigned over proposals ‘which came from his department’.
Allies of IDS insists that the Treasury came up with the plan, which he objected to as Mr Osborne simultaneously handed Britain’s richest earners a £523-a-year bonus though changes to the tax thresholds.
No 10 knew Mr Duncan Smith was a high resignation risk: he and Mr Cameron had a blazing row in February, before the Prime Minister had negotiated his deal with Brussels returning powers to the UK. Mr Duncan Smith claimed that Mr Cameron and pro-Europe Ministers had broken a vow to stay silent until the deal was confirmed, openly campaigning to stay in the EU – while rebels like him had been gagged.
One source told The Mail on Sunday at the time: ‘Iain was steaming. He told the PM he had broken his word and it was outrageous for him and other Ministers to promote the deal openly when dissidents like him had kept quiet as agreed’.
At the time, Mr Duncan Smith had taken soundings over whether to walk out of the Cabinet.
Fresh evidence of the long-running feud between Mr Duncan
Smith and Mr Osborne is contained in a new book by former Liberal Democrat Minister David Laws, revealed in today’s Mail on Sunday.
Laws discloses that Osborne and Cameron unsuccessfully tried to oust Duncan Smith from his Cabinet post as long as four years ago because they had little faith in his Universal Credits welfare shake-up.
Osborne called the reforms a ‘nightmare’, says Laws. And Cameron complained: ‘Unless it’s got the letters “UC” in it, Iain’s just not interested.’
The book also plunged Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne into a further row over figures because of their Election pledge to give the NHS an extra £8billion to fill a ‘black hole’ in its budget. Mr Laws’s book says Downing Street was told the health service needed £16billion extra a year by 2020, but dismissed it as ‘a joke.’ The revelation comes after the Chancellor was accused of ‘fiddling’ the numbers in Wednesday’s Budget.
Last night, with the shock from Mr Duncan Smith’s resignation still reverberating, his allies rallied to his case. Former Tory chairman David Davis said: ‘Cameron and Osborne made Iain’s position impossible. Iain was on a moral mission to help the disadvantaged: Osborne sees government as an excercise in book-keeping.’
And Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: ‘Obviously there has been great personal antagonism between Osborne and IDS for a while now, but the main problem has been that, as a Brexit supporter, he has been forced by No 10 to campaign with one hand tied behind his back. He will now be free to say whatever he wants, which is a great boost for us’.
Senior Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, a fellow ‘Out’ campaigner, denied suggestions that Mr Duncan Smith’s resignation was connected to the EU referendum, as well as hitting out at Mr Cameron’s ‘presidential’ style of government and taking a thinl veiled swipe at George Osborne for focusing on ‘short-term, tactical advantage’.
‘If we returned to Cabinet government, this state of affairs would be less likely,’ he said. ‘The resignation clearly has got nothing to with the European issue. Iain has made welfare reform his work – not all politicians focus on short-term, tactical advantage in what they do.’
But in a sign of mounting Tory divisions, Stevenage MP Stephen McPartland said it was ‘disingenuous’ to blame the Treasury for the welfare row, saying: ‘I will not be shedding any tears for the evangelical, aggressive and routinely failing welfare reforms that were the personal fiefdom of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.’
Meanwhile, former Tory deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft made clear his feelings by posting on Twitter the bookmakers’ odds on the next Tory leader.
Ms Patel issued a statement paying tribute to her former boss – but making clear that she was happy to work alongside Mr Osborne.
‘It has been a real privilege to work alongside the great social reformer, Iain Duncan Smith MP, during my time as Minister for Employment,’ she said.
‘Since coming to office in 2010, he has made a real difference to the life chances of people throughout the country by reforming the welfare system to ensure that work always pays. I look forward to continuing to play my part as Minister for Employment in transforming people’s life chances by working closely with the incoming Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Chancellor of the Exchequer’.
Last night, when asked if Mr Cameron called Mr Duncan Smith a ‘s***,’ a senior Downing Street source said: ‘I don’t recognise that.’
‘I’ll shed no tears for IDS’s failing reforms’