Iain Duncan Smith doesn't deserve a pat on the back

On the 18th March, Iain Duncan Smith resigned from his post as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the Conservative Party resulting in cries of joy from lefties like myself, but whilst I can relish this moment, I have some opinions. I have seen all over my Twitter timeline and Facebook feed  that Iain Duncan Smith is a good person because he 'stuck to his principles' and resigned his post as he believed that George Osbourne's budget which victimised the disabled was, in his words, 'a compromise too far'. I gots some problems with this, so I'm going to dissect what his little letter said and explain why it is BS.

He opened with:

"I am incredibly proud of the welfare reforms that the Government has delivered over the last five years."

Really, Iain? You're going to say you're 'incredibly proud' of introducing Universal Credit which forces all low paid employees into desperate competition for casual work? You're 'incredibly proud' of the Bedroom Tax which charges the poor if they're given social housing with 'more rooms than they require', despite the fact that there is also a lack of social housing so tenants really don't have much choice in where they live so it's essentially arbitrarily charging the poor, you're proud of that, are you?

"Those reforms have helped to generate record rates of employment and in particular a substantial reduction in workless households."

Hm, are these jobs on zero hour contracts? Y'know those contracts whereby the employer has no obligation to offer work to the employees so the employee can't be certain they'll earn enough money to get through the week? Oh yeah, great job (pun not intended).

"I truly believe that we have made changes that will greatly improve the life chances of the most disadvantaged people in this country and increase their opportunities to thrive."

Is this some sort of sick joke? Just last week, Iain Duncan Smith was in full support of reducing the Employment and Support Allowance meaning that claimants would receive £30 less a week. Claimants include hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people, such as sufferers of cancer, Parkinson's disease and mental illness - I mean, I could be wrong, these people are pretty disadvantaged and it seems like you're taking away what little opportunity they have to thrive, Iain, but that could just be me. 

"Together, we've made enormous strides towards building a system of social security that gets the balance right between state-help and self-help."

The Tories don't promote state-help, the concept of self-help is fundamental to Conservative ideology - so basically, every man for himself. This is why continually the Tories allow big businesses and bankers to avoid paying their taxes. This is why Iain Duncan Smith, like other Tory MPs, gets away with claiming expenses to buy a £39 breakfast, talk about scroungers, eh? The Tories literally take money from the poor to give other rich people like themselves tax cuts - the reverse Robin Hood effect.

"I am unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self-imposed restraints that I believe are more and more perceived as distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest."

Austerity is distinctly political and has been shown not to do much good economically (for a contemporary example, Greece was forced to adhere to strict austerity measures and this resulted in a deeper recession, mass unemployment, the widening of budget deficits, and a rise in debt levels). Austerity is purely ideological warfare used to target the poor and the vulnerable, it's used to restructure the state in a way that benefits the privileged leaving the poor fighting for scraps. However, I don't believe Iain Duncan Smith is against austerity like he seems to be suggesting. Let's not forget that he voted against raising welfare benefits, he voted against paying higher benefits over longer periods to those who can't work because of illness or disability, he voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits, he voted against spending public money to create guaranteed jobs for young people who've been unemployed for a long time, he voted against a banker's bonus tax, he voted against the mansion tax, he voted for reducing corporation tax, he voted for raising tuition fees, and he voted for academy schools - Iain Duncan Smith is not anti-austerity.

"You should be very proud of what this government has done on deficit reduction, corporate competitiveness, education reforms and devolution of power."

Okay right, George Osbourne inherited a debt of £1 trillion. By May 2015, the debt was £1.5 trillion. I'm going to really dumb this down for any conservatives reading, but £1.5 trillion is a bigger number than £1 trillion, have you got that? I know I'll end up just complaining about Capitalism with this claim of improved corporate competitiveness, but I'm just going to say is corporate competitiveness a good thing? Or is it just this capitalist mantra that greed and selfishness should be promoted? The education reforms like academisation of schools has done nothing but divide teachers' unions, pit schools against each other, and generally lower standards of education. For example, academy schools are given more money depending on how many pupils they have which results in overcrowded classrooms and a generally much poorer educational experience. Speaking as someone who went to a High School that became an academy, I did notice the teachers were generally a lot less happier, so much so that nearly the entire science department at my school left! Lastly, devolution of power is not a good thing, this is a neoliberal tactic to bow out of accountability. By devolving powers, the government can easily deny responsibility when they're faced with a backlash - basically, it's their get out of jail free card. So, no Iain, I'm not proud of what this government has done regarding the areas you've mentioned (I'm not proud of anything they've done to be frank, I'm not sure if you can tell) and I don't think you, or anyone else, should be proud either.