"Hang on"

Perhaps you watched the interview with Iain Duncan Smith today on The Sunday Politics.  It was much as we have come to expect, although Andrew Neil did try, for once.  But from the moment IDS opened his mouth he lied.  Neil tried to nail him on Universal Credit.  There's no need to go over the true history of that epic failure.  IDS has rewritten history, as he always does.  He is the hero who spotted what was going wrong and got it all sorted out, and now it's all going swimmingly.  Neil confronted him with graphics to show that a normal, low-paid family in his own constituency would be worse off.  But it's pointless confronting Smith with figures; they don't register with him.  Today he was shown a graph and maintained completely different figures.  Whenever Neil tried to move on to a different point, Smith said, "Hang on," and reiterated the falsehood he was insisting on.  There was one whopping, blatant lie which stood out.  "The Treasury hasn't signed off Universal Credit," said Neil.  "Yes it has," said IDS, and nothing could move him.  Neil hates this, so after the interview he produced confirmation in the form of a direct quote from a Treasury official at the Public Accounts Committee recently.
The Feeding Britain report was brought up.  The bulk of people needing food banks were suffering benefit delays and sanctions.  No, "benefits were now being paid more quickly - from 88-89% being on time under Labour, to 96-97% now."  I have no idea whether that's true, but since IDS said it I assume it isn't; certainly the delays are much, much longer now.  And anyway, he said, food bank use "is tiny in proportion here compared to a place like Germany which has more generous benefits and in which you have a higher level of pay.  So just saying it is to do with benefits is quite wrong. What I do say is there are lots of other reasons lots of people go to food banks."  For Andrew Neil it must have felt like banging one's head against a brick wall.
There was nothing to provoke a headline until the end of the interview.  He was shown clips of various ministers saying that the "welfare" budget would have to be cut still further.  Where would those cuts fall?  Would you limit child benefit to two children, asked Neil, echoing something the hard right has been pushing lately.  IDS said he would certainly consider it.
We can rant and rage and heap abuse on this man.  But try to take a step back and consider what's going on.  Does Smith actually believe what he says?  Or does he know that he's lying and not care?  I suspect it's a bit more complicated.  We have a toxic combination of fixed ideology and grandiose self-delusion.  And it persists because his party loves it.  Who else could they find to do their dirty work for them with such enthusiasm?  Possibly Chris Grayling.  But all the other Tories who would do the job with gusto are even more stupid than Smith (think McVey, or Philip Davies or Alec Shelbrooke).  Those with ability tend to maintain a tiny morsel of compassion.  So IDS sails on.

Don't bother asking IDS

You probably watched it.  That awful interview with Iain Duncan Smith on the Sunday Politics programme.  If so, your blood pressure might have settled down by now.
The producers had specifically asked for questions.  Of course, the majority were probably abusive and couldn't be used.  But plenty would not have been.  However, only one or two were used.  This was, as expected, more to do with Andrew Neil's questions.  It was too wide-ranging and there was no one on hand with the knowledge to challenge the torrent of lies and evasions.  Everybody is wrong except IDS.  The head of his church, Archbishop Nicholls, was wrong and should have called IDS before expressing an opinion.  I could go on, but what's the point?

Ask IDS

Sorry to keep doing this, but there's something else our regular readers need to know.
The Sunday Politics programme (BBC1, 11.00 am) have Iain Duncan Smith as the guest.  They are tweeting that they want questions for him - use the hashtag #askIDS
They will be deluged, so be succinct.

Emma again - and rewriting history

If Wednesday night's interview on Channel 4 News was a disaster for A4e owner Emma Harrison, she hasn't given up.  Yesterday she appeared in a filmed interview for the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire edition of the Sunday Politics on BBC TV.  You can find it here, 36 mins and 30 secs in.  The introduction managed to get the facts wrong.  She was said to have resigned after criticism of her success rate.  That was only part of it, of course.  It was the publicity about fraud which exercises Harrison.  "The newspaper headlines were so wrong and so inflammatory," she said.  The accusations were "proved not to be true".  Hang on.  There were instances of fraud by A4e staff, just as there were by staff of other w2w companies.  Their own 2009 internal report showed probable fraud.  And the Slough case goes back to court this Wednesday.  But if Harrison says something often enough it must be true.  She says that it took a lot of nerve to stand up to the bullies.  A brief clip of John Healey MP shows him referring to "huge personal payment" for Harrison, but that wasn't put to her.  Apropos the leaked numbers, we did learn something interesting.  She said they "aren't meaningful" because there's now 18 months worth of data.  Does this mean, as we suspected, that the long delay in publishing the figures was so that the DWP could put out 18 months worth rather than 12, because it's got a bit better?  The interview was heavily edited.  Back in the studio, there was a brief discussion between two MPs.  The Conservative, Craig Whittaker, stuck to the line that payment by results is the best model because if the companies don't succeed they don't get paid.  He doesn't appear to have considered what happens to the clients.  The Labour MP Fabian Hamilton said that he didn't like PBR when his own government introduced it, and thinks the fact that the owner of a company can take £8m out of it shows it isn't working.  He would like to see civil servants trained to do the job.
Whether this last few days has been part of a determined effort at a come-back by Emma Harrison is hard to tell.  I suspect the company would rather it wasn't.