Iain Duncan Smith sensationally resigns over George Osborne's cruel disability cuts

[villager]

Source: Daily Mirror

Tory axeman Iain Duncan Smith sensationally quit the Cabinet tonight in protest at George Osborne’s latest disability cuts.

The former Tory leader dramatically resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary - and launched a stinging attack on the Chancellor’s ‘sugar and spite’ Budget .

IDS, who has overseen some of the most brutal cuts to welfare in a generation since 2010, said the £4.4billion cut to Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) was a step too far.

He contrasted the decision to strip 370,000 disabled people of £3,500-a-year with the huge tax cuts handed out to the rich.

“The latest changes to benefits to the disabled - and the context in which they’ve been made - are a compromise too far,” Mr Duncan Smith wrote in his resignation letter to the Prime Minister.

“They are not defensible within a Budget that benefits higher-earning taxpayers.”

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Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/iain-duncan-smith-sensationally-resigns-7587588

[LeftishBrit]

1. This is a shock and a half

I would have thought it impossible to be too mean-spirited for Iain Duncan-Smith - but Osborne seems to have managed it.

[HuckleB]

2. Recommended!

[villager]

3. Well, shit howdy!

(Thanks for the rec...!)

[HuckleB]

5. Absolutely. I'm on your side when it comes to this.

[villager]

6. That, and sci-fi, as I recall...

[HuckleB]

7. I'm currently reading "The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin.

It's good stuff!

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. But this is, 'Dog bites man'. It's normal fro the right-wing to achieve

as expeditiously as possible the premature deaths of as many of the poorer public as possible. Snakes in suits. Psychopaths R Us. Still, it's good that it's being reported as a scandalous, new development. Especially by IDS, which, of course, lends a dimension of wholesale farce.

[aggiesal]

8. I lived with the Brits for 2.5 years back in the 90's ...

and they loved listening to Rush Lumpbutt.

Now they are reaping the spoiled fruits of that decision.

I never thought I'd see any European country go through the same
austerity nonsense that our conservative legislatures are implementing in the US.

[LeftishBrit]

14. While we have our own RW pundits...

I have rarely met a Brit who even knew who Rush Limbaugh was, let alone loved listening to him (I had never heard of him before joining DU).

Now if you were to say that too many Brits love the RW rantings of Melanie Phillips, Richard Littlejohn, Peter Hitchens, and other tabloid writers, you would sadly be correct!

[aggiesal]

15. I was dealing with military types ...

RAF specifically.
I think they would listen via
American Forces Radio.

[Oak3Tree]

9. A tragedy! for those in need

[Oak3Tree]

10. Why was Obama OK with cutting disability....

by 20% here? Does anyone know how that got stopped?

[JoFerret]

11. Good news!

[allan01]

12. seems to me they dont care who they dont hurt .

[Overseas]

13. K&R. Glad he resigned.