Blair failed. So did Thatcher. If anyone can mend a welfare system ruining Britain, it's this brave man

[Sanguine]

Mail Online:

 

There are very few people in public life with finer personal qualities than Iain Duncan Smith, the newly appointed Work and Pensions Secretary.

 

As Tory leader six years ago, he was reviled, humiliated, plotted against and finally betrayed by his own colleagues. Everybody would have understood and sympathised if he had quit politics.

 

But Iain Duncan Smith did not sulk. There were no bitter private briefings. He did not take the usual failed politician's route and enrich himself as a lobbyist, company director or after-dinner speaker. Nor did he write a self-indulgent, money-spinning memoir that seems almost obligatory these days for any politician who leaves office.

 

Duncan Smith, a former British soldier and the son of a wartime fighter pilot, just bashed on. He devoted himself to the study of what is perhaps the most perplexing and yet crucial issue that faces our country today.

 

The former Tory leader wanted to find the answer to two questions. Why, when Britain is more prosperous than at any time in our history, is there also so much poverty and deprivation? And, despite a prolonged period of peace and security, why are crime, homelessness, family breakdown and drug addiction reaching record levels?

 

As Duncan Smith said last week: 'A system originally designed to support the poorest in society is now trapping them in the very condition it was supposed to alleviate.'

 

Pretty amazing intelligence, integrity and candor from a politician.