IDS blasts Cameron over cuts to benefits
Print Edition
A top British eurosceptic minister who quit over welfare cuts launched a damaging attack on Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday, exposing tensions within his government ahead of June’s referendum on European Union membership.
In his first interview since resigning Friday, Iain Duncan Smith accused Cameron of trying to reduce Britain’s budget gap by cutting benefits that were unfairly hurting poorer voters while protecting older, richer ones.
Duncan Smith, who last month became one of the most prominent Conservatives to say he would campaign against Cameron for Britain to leave the EU on June 23, denied his shock resignation was about Europe.
But he admitted Cameron and his finance minister and close ally George Osborne had stopped listening to him.
“This is not some secondary attempt to attack the prime minister or about Europe,” Duncan Smith said in a BBC TV interview, adding he quit because he was “losing that ability to influence events from the inside”.
The resignation of Duncan Smith — an ex-Conservative leader often referred to simply as IDS — is perhaps the biggest blow Cameron has suffered since being re-elected last year.
It comes three months before the EU membership referendum which opinion polls say will be closely fought.
In his resignation letter, he questioned whether Cameron was honoring his slogan that Britons were “all in this together,” despite deep austerity cuts.
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