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| Iain Duncan Smith slams Osborne and Cameron: 'this is not the way to do government' - live | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| 10.23am GMT | |
| 10:23 | |
| Ros Altmann, the pensions minsiter who made that extraordinary statement attacking IDS has been speaking to John Pienaar’s show on Radio 5Live. | |
| Altmann claims the resignation had been planned for weeks: “This was coming... this has to be about Europe not the policy.” | |
| There is absolutely no love lost here. She claims to have been effectively silenced by IDS, unable to speak her mind, tweet or update her consumer rights’ blog. | |
| Ros Altmann on Pienaar brands IDS resignation "disingenuous" + thinks he planned it to damage the government. "This has to be about Europe" | |
| Updated | |
| at 10.25am GMT | |
| 10.19am GMT | |
| 10:19 | |
| IDS assessment of George Osborne is even more astonishing when you see it written down. pic.twitter.com/ZnN0BQdtQq | |
| 10.16am GMT | |
| 10:16 | |
| Owen Smith, Labour’s shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, offers his view on the Iain Duncan Smith’s interview on the Andrew Marr show. He says the Conservative Party is “tearing itself apart over an unfair Budget” and that Osborne should resign. | |
| “No-one will believe Iain Duncan Smith’s sudden change of heart,” he said. | |
| After all this is the man who introduced the Bedroom Tax. But what his comments do reveal is growing anger within the Conservative Party about George Osborne’s management of the economy. | |
| The Chancellor’s unfair Budget is falling apart at the seams. George Osborne now needs to urgently clarify whether these cuts to disability benefits will go ahead and, if not, how he will make up for the huge hole in his Budget. | |
| Jeremy Corbyn is right. Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation is a symptom of a wider problem made at the Treasury. | |
| George Osborne should take responsibility and resign. He has failed his party, failed the economy and failed our country. | |
| Updated | |
| at 10.17am GMT | |
| 10.15am GMT | |
| 10:15 | |
| Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary, is speaking on Murnaghan now. | |
| He says politicians must remember that “amongst the political intrigue” hundreds and thousands of disabled people are worried about the future, and calls on Stephen Crabb, the new secretary of state, to cancel the new criteria for PIP. | |
| “The new villain of the piece is emerging,” Burnham said, referring to Osborne. “He has reduced people to fear and nervous exhaustion. He has made arbitrary cuts to benefits that even IDS couldn’t support. They play politics with the lives of vulnerable people.” | |
| Updated | |
| at 10.15am GMT | |
| 10.09am GMT | |
| 10:09 | |
| Amber Rudd: 'To launch this bombshell... is really disappointing' | |
| Amber Rudd, the secretary of state for Energy and Climate Change, is speaking on Sky News’ Murnaghan about IDS’ resignation. | |
| I don’t really understand it, I am perplexed but I have sat at cabinet with him every week, and then to launch this bombshell at the rest of us, it is difficult to understand and is really disappointing. | |
| She said she resents his “high moral tone” on one nation Conservatism. “We are a team as a government and he has broken ranks with that team which is upsetting.” | |
| He has now “created a bit more time on his hands” to work on getting Britain out of the EU, Rudd said. Number 10 is very keen to push this line. | |
| Updated | |
| at 10.12am GMT | |
| 10.05am GMT | |
| 10:05 | |
| Anushka Asthana | |
| Here’s the Guardian’s political editor’s first take on that dramatic interview. | |
| Iain Duncan Smith spent five years in opposition drawing up plans to overhaul welfare; Universal Credit was the entire basis of his decision to co-found the Centre for Social Justice think-tank. | |
| His key argument today is that his desire to roll out those reforms was the only reason that he entered Government - an ambition to drive a “social justice” agenda that would help people into work. | |
| What he hadn’t realised was going to happen was the 2008 financial crash that would devastate the economic landscape in which he would enter the Department for Work and Pensions. | |
| Duncan Smith said he knew that Government would require “compromise” but he wanted to do it in order to try to deliver his plans. | |
| Doing so under the cloak of austerity meant that welfare cuts became the overriding narrative, while Universal Credit was more seen as a huge, at time inefficient reform, which had its deadline pushed further and further back. | |
| Duncan Smith says he could take the austerity agenda, but admitted that he was constantly under fire from the Treasury. | |
| Despite his warm words for the Prime Minister and Chancellor, his key argument he made this morning was that the Conservatives were this morning is damning: to suggest that the leadership went brutally after welfare because the working poor were not a group that had or ever would vote Tory. | |
| Critics of Duncan Smith would ask why he then accepted the scale of cutbacks for six years before stepping away. Disability reforms, he said, were the straw that broke the camel’s back. | |
| He said he had supported policies to help pensioners like the triple lock, but enough was enough. The warning now is that there is a risk that Government policy is drifting in a discretion that “divides society rather than unites it”. | |
| Which, however much he tried to avoid attacking his party, is a highly critical point.It shines a light on the way that the Treasury has pitted the welfare bill against other departmental spending - because one thing is true: it is very popular to cut benefits. | |
| Labour has struggled itself with how to respond because the polling is so stark.Duncan Smith’s parting shot is to say the time has come for politics to rise above populism - and stop hurting the most vulnerable, just because it is easy to do so. | |
| For that he will be commended. But for campaigners who viciously opposed policies like the bedroom tax - it may feel like too little too late.As for George Osborne’s leadership hopes - Duncan Smith didn’t need to put the knife in on the Andrew Marr show - the entire resignation has done that, reducing Osborne’s chances dramatically. | |
| David Cameron is trying to protect his closest colleague and friend by making sure that it is number 10 reacting to Duncan Smith’s decision. But the Treasury team will now also be desperately trying to find ways to shore up their boss’s position. | |
| 10.04am GMT | |
| 10:04 | |
| Some of the rapid reaction on social media on what must surely rank as one of the most explosive political interviews in recent history. | |
| That was simply amazing. I can't remember a more dramatic political interview on television for years #marr | |
| Blimey. IDS tells #marr government only cares about people who vote for them, are attacking the vulnerable and risk dividing the country... | |
| The whole of Osborne and Cameron's political mission since 2010, focus on eliminating the deficit, attacked by IDS. Extraordinary. #marr | |
| Updated | |
| at 10.18am GMT | |
| 9.57am GMT | |
| 09:57 | |
| IDS has finished his interview, reiterating he would vote for David Cameron to remain PM if there was a leadership election tomorrow. | |
| 9.53am GMT | 9.53am GMT |
| 09:53 | 09:53 |
| IDS insists his resignation is not personal attacks against Osborne. | IDS insists his resignation is not personal attacks against Osborne. |
| Would George Osborne make a good prime minister? “I would hope he would,” he said. | Would George Osborne make a good prime minister? “I would hope he would,” he said. |
| He calls talk of a coup “piffle”. | |
| I have a high regard for the prime minister. I would not stand for leader or support someone who could stand for leader now. | |
| “It is not easy, it is painful to resign,” he said. “I am not in the business of morality, but the risk is there and I want to change that. I would rather campaign to change that.” | |
| I care for one thing and one thing only...that the people who don’t get the choices my children get are not left behind. | |
| Updated | |
| at 10.01am GMT | |
| 9.51am GMT | 9.51am GMT |
| 09:51 | 09:51 |
| IDS: 'I have absolutely no personal ambitions' | |
| IDS said he understood the “need to eradicate the deficit because the people who suffer most people are people on lowest incomes.” | IDS said he understood the “need to eradicate the deficit because the people who suffer most people are people on lowest incomes.” |
| But he said the government had to “widen the scope” in the ways in which it tried to get the deficit down, not just by targeting working age benefits. | But he said the government had to “widen the scope” in the ways in which it tried to get the deficit down, not just by targeting working age benefits. |
| He suggested the working age benefits were targeted because “it doesn’t matter because [people on benefits] don’t vote for us. But they are people, people who I want to help get into work.” | He suggested the working age benefits were targeted because “it doesn’t matter because [people on benefits] don’t vote for us. But they are people, people who I want to help get into work.” |
| “I have absolutely no personal ambitions. If I never go back into government I won’t cry about that.” | |
| Updated | Updated |
| at 10.12am GMT | |