Iain Duncan Smith spent five years in the Cabinet not resigning over cuts to disabled people’s payments that did happen, before resigning over that one that won’t happen. The proposed cuts to the Personal Independence Payment had already been called off following a public revolt by Conservative backbenchers, and news that the cut will be cancelled arrived in journalists’ inboxes long before Duncan Smith’s resignation did.
All of which might lead you to think that something else is going on, that this resignation has more to do with the coming referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union than anything to do with the welfare budget. For politicos – weaned on a diet of The West Wing, Borgen, Scandal et al – this is a particularly tempting narrative. We love to believe that there’s a plan, that everything happens for a reason. There’s just one small problem here: and that problem is Iain Duncan Smith.
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