Iain Duncan Smith versus Jeremy Heywood

There’s war in Whitehall. The Sunday Times devotes its p2 lead (£) to the fact that Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, is ‘sceptical’ of the Universal Credit, the key to Iain Duncan Smith’s revolutionary welfare reforms. The newspaper has gathered its intelligence by reading the leading article of this week’s Spectator, and repeats our point that civil servants will interpret Heywood’s reservations as a ‘go-slow order’. Here is what our leader column says:

‘Treasury officials have been against Duncan Smith from the start, due to the threat which Universal Credit posed to their beloved tax credits. Ambition in itself is looked down upon by ministers who deride ‘IDS’s grand projet’. Sir Jeremy Heywood, the civil servant effectively running Britain, is letting it be known that he is ‘sceptical’ about Duncan Smith’s mission. This, in Whitehall, is the equivalent of a go-slow order.’