The silent man-for six long years.

There is a danger as the Tory party collapses into a heap of nothingness that some are tempted to see Ian Duncan Smith as some sort of martyr,almost heroic in standing up to the Cameron hegemony and destroying the legend that is Osborne's financial probity.
Piffle, utter piffle.
IDS is a totally unreconstructed Thatcherite who has long preached the creed iof austerity and blamed poverty on ,well to put it simply, the poor.
Smith stands for the old Samuel Smiles vision of the poor standing on their own two feet, of putting up with hardship with gritted teeth and determination to drag themselves up by their bootstraps, or die in the process.
I do not believe that he had a Damascusene  conversion after visiting Easterhouse in Glasgow any more than I believe in fairies or indeed that Donald Trump is the answer to any question that mankind faces.
Indeed if Trump is the answer then it's a fucking stupid question!
I digress.
IDS has been pushing his solution to poverty ever since he supped at the feet of his heroine and replaced Tebbitt as the MP for Chingford and Central Nurenberg.

What we are watching is the falling out amongst thieves, it reminds me very much of the 'council meetings' in Ragged Trousered Philanthropists when the elite of Mugsborough got together to divide out the spoils.
The Tory Party are not really a party in any obvious sense, they are a band of opportunist chancers, self interested  gangsters,xenophobes,who combine for only one purpose-to steal the roof while the sun shines!
That's not to say that over the last century or so there haven't been Tories with something that approaches principle, indeed I have met some in local government who have a genuine concern for the people they represent and have a sort of guiding philosophy that has even a little logic behind it.
Few and far between are such Tories, and fewer by the day, and sadly even the logic is a little (no actually quite a lot) flawed.
But there are I'm sure some decent people who really believed that'we're all in this together'.Why there might even be some misguided people in the Labour Party and the Lib-Dems who believed that 'we're all in this together'
IDS has blown that idea right out of the water, along with the mantra of 'austerity now' or what they really meant was 'austerity for you lot-for ever and ever !
We are not all in anything together and never have been, and austerity simply is not the answer to the question- I refer back to my judgement on Trump earlier if you want a reason.

And I say very clearly to my loyal readership in the East Midlands Labour Party, who I understand pore over my blogs to find heresies and examples of deviation and divisiveness:
"Listen to the Leader of the Labour Party"
While you have been wringing your hands and whittling on about how Jeremy is not the leader you wanted, why low and behold, the hostile media have noted at last that austerity is not the answer (because of course IDS,one of the architects of austerity now thinks its gone too far) and indeed as Jeremy has been saying since the day he was first elected -worrying about the national debt and clearing the historic deficit  is not as important as ending poverty and building a fair and just society,based not on fiscal policy but on human values.

And surprise,surprise, it would appear that it's not just young radicals who are listening to him either.I don't for one second believe that the media will stop demonising the Labour Leader, but millions of people,unconcerned about Brexit or 'Stronger together' or whatever the chosen slogan will begin to recognise that the last decade has been one of mounting inequality and stultifying greed.
Time to tear up the slick PR spin sheet and look to something better.
IDS is already part of a history that the people can do without.Time to see that we don't need a handful of Tory MP's shuffling for advancement in Westminster, thee is a movement growing, in thiscountry,over Europe and further afield.
As I approach my seventieth summer I have never been more optimistic.