Alas, They Are Not Worthy

Allies of the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith are briefing against his Cabinet colleagues and proclaiming him the Good Cop among the poor-bashers. Apparently the Conservatives, in an unprecedented move, made some pledges during the election that they didn't intend to keep; and now, in another unprecedented move, the Cabinet is trying to keep them, thereby placing a severe strain upon the intellectual capacities of the brilliant Duncan Smith and his almost equally brilliant allies, whose professional advice and expertise Lynton Crosby and the Bullingdons seem somehow to have managed without. The brilliant Duncan Smith, whose pet Universal Credit project is doubtless as much on schedule as it ever has been during the few geological eras since its inception, is worried that cutting the welfare bill by the promised twelve billion will undermine his grand schemes for the moral redemption of proledom. The solution, as always, is "behavioural change" among his inferiors, and "structural reform" of the Department for Workfare and Privation, which has so consistently failed to live up to the brilliant Duncan Smith's compassionate vision.