Compassionate Conservatism has taken a bit of a kicking in the past few months: from leftwing critics who want to claim it is dead (but who always disagreed with its central premise anyway) and from certain Conservatives such as George Osborne who prefer a nice political dividing line. But today, as previewed in the Spectator last week, Iain Duncan Smith restated the need for this key strand of Tory thinking, and he set it firmly within the Conservative reforming tradition, saying:
‘As Conservatives, that is part of our Party’s historic mission – just look at Wilberforce and Shaftesbury – to put hope back where it has gone, to give people from chaotic lives security through hard work… helping families to improve the quality of their own lives.’
Some might dismiss this as grandiose, and others as blinkered to the reality of what the Conservatives are doing in government (it is striking that ministers tend to describe the ‘bedroom tax’ as ‘Lord Freud’s policy’, and if Universal Credit were the only indicator of the health of Compassionate Conservatism, then it would be requiring urgent medical attention).
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