Ian Duncan Smith (pictured), keen to have a party role after his dismal attempt at party leadership, established for the Conservatives the curiously named 'Social Justice Policy Group'.
"Why is a right-wing Tory proclaiming the need to give social justice to the poor and working classes," said many...er... Tories. Well, they need not have feared. The title is a complete misnomer; it could be more accurately termed, the Clinging-to-the-Notion-of -an-Ideal-Society-which-only-existed-in-John-Mills-films-in-the-1950s Group.
The SJPG published their report on the 'Broken Society' seemingly for the third time today. IDS saw the publication as "timely" given the current case of the highly distressing death of Baby P in Haringey. But he chose the timing and so is putting party politics where it does not belong. Cameron's shameful bellowing of incorrect 'facts' about the case at PMQs last week did not underline his reasonable concern but brought shame on the Commons. Even Speaker Mick Martin's dignified appeals were ignored,"it is not good, at a time when we have heard this news about a little child who has gone before us, that we should be shouting across the Chamber."
IDS's report champions marriage as the great panacea to the nation's ills. Conservative policy at the next election is likely to include tax breaks for married people regardless of their level of income and none for the non-marrieds or for those with new unmarried partners termed disturbingly, "non-biological adults". Duncan Smith does not show any evidence how this discriminatory tax system would restore the marriage ideal. The report reads like a series of moral prejudices and mother's knee philosophy, employing some pretty disasteful terms such as, "black families" and "breeding."
It is an almost endless stream of generalist discrimination and suburban despair. For example, how's this for a sweeping statement, "it is no longer seen as a moral duty to look after ageing parents or blood relatives". Millions of carers up and down the country must be wondering to themselves why they spend so much effort looking after their mother, husband or child, if IDS is so sure their selfless committment is not derived from a sense of "moral duty".
IDS has always been somewhat removed from reality; his report paints a picture of English life disinfected from modern culture. The evangelical proposal to offer heroin addicts abstinence, rather than treatment, shows a total ignorance of the nature of drug dependence.
But IDS's unfamiliarity, if not disconnection, with human experience has been the hallmark of his political career. As leader, he behaved as if his considerable military experience would allow him to control his MPs like a battallion of compliant sappers. It did not - his 'loyal' troops de-frocked him with an unusual degree of alacrity, even for Tories. To put the failure of his 2001-3 leadership into context, he was only the second Conservative leader (after Neville Chamberlain) to be dumped without even contesting a General Election.
Iain's new role allows him to throw himself into 'people' issues and mix with minorities with a certain gauche enthusiasm - a bit like a Latin prep master 'getting down' to a Calypso at school assembly.
He's the kind of person who is the last to get the joke, if he gets it at all. His final billetting in the army was as bag-carrier to Lord (Christopher) Soames, last Governor of Rhodesia. Soames detested IDS's relentless sobriety and took to calling him, "Iain Drunken Smith," to which Captain Smith would reply meekly, "But, Sir, I've told you, I don't drink."
The only memorable quotation IDS contributed to political life was, "never underestimate the determination of a quiet man". For now, I wish he'd just shut up.
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