Iain Duncan Smith: Labour has chance to take a major Tory scalp as opponent steps aside
Uh-oh: It’s looking bad for the man who inflicted Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax on the UK.
Labour’s Faiza Shaheen has a stronger chance to unseat Tory and Brexit figurehead Iain Duncan Smith after a Green candidate stood aside.
Mr Duncan Smith will be well-known – and hated – by long-term readers of This Site as the architect of many of the benefit changes that have caused misery and death to so many UK citizens, while he was Work and Pensions secretary.
The Bedroom Tax was his idea, as was Universal Credit – possibly the most costly white elephant ever to be unleashed on the public by a UK government.
He froze benefits and changed the assessment system to make it more difficult for people who deserved benefits – especially disability benefits – to receive them.
In the 2017 election, his majority in his Chingford and Woodford Green constituency was only 2,438 – with a Labour candidate as runner-up.
The Greens took 1,204 votes and the Liberal Democrats 2,043. Now, Green voters are being urged to support Ms Shaheen.
It is unlikely that Liberal Democrat supporters will receive the same urge toward tactical voting, given their party leader’s antipathy toward the Labour Party – but they should be encouraged to do it anyway.
After all – the Liberal Democrats rely on tactical voting in many other constituencies (including This Writer’s – Brecon and Radnorshire – where the Green Party stepped aside to allow the Lib Dems to unseat a Tory).
According to The Independent, the Green candidate selected for the Chingford seat, John Tyne, said: “The actions of IDS as the architect of the failed rollout of Universal Credit mean that we believe he is unfit for office.”
This Writer can only agree – and urge the people of that constituency to support the campaign to oust Iain Duncan Smith.
His continued position as a member of Parliament is an insult to all those his policies have harmed – or, indeed, killed.
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And he wants to raise the retirement age beyond life expectancy:
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/life-expectancy-in-uk-falls-amid-rise-in-avoidable-deaths-in-disadvantaged-communities-report-shows/ar-BBWJWSb?ocid=ientp
It would certainly be a cause for celebration if Smith were to lose his seat.
He should resign in shame…..
I wonder will he ever answer for his crimes against humanity his own people’s but stripping away his power bit by bit RTU IDs has culled the stock through benefits denial
Chingford has been Tory almost since the flood. It was once Churchill’s seat and the incumbent prior to Duncan-Smith was the delightful Norman Tebbitt. Almost nobody would be sorry to see Duncan-Smith rendered unemployed, though I suspect he’d still be a long way short of having to apply for Universal Credit.