The Tears of a Clown When There's Someone Around

Among the perils of sainthood is an excess of sympathy, even for enemies of the race such as young people and single mothers. A few months ago, the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith had a bit of an on-camera snivel about a nineteen-year-old single mother who had somehow failed to be incentivised into work by the Government's programme of motivational impoverishment. This was in December, before the Chancellor's vicious attacks on vulnerable members of society had obtruded themselves upon Duncan Smith's devoutly Christian conscience. The brilliant Duncan Smith has turned on the public waterworks before, on a visit to a Glasgow tenement whose residents he commenced kicking as soon as Baby Jesus, with a little help from Britain's Head Boy, exalted him unto the Department of Workfare and Privation. As on that moving occasion (it's a matter for the individual worshipper whether motion occurs in the heart or the bile duct), it would of course be uncharitable in the extreme to suggest that the man who was too thick-headed to lead the Stupid Party might have been indulging in a bit of lacrimatory crocodilism.