Portrait of the week | 23 March 2016

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Iain Duncan Smith resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary two days after the Budget, throwing the government into a fine pickle. In his letter of resignation, he said that new changes to benefits to the disabled were ‘not defensible in the way they were placed within a Budget that benefits higher-earning taxpayers’. With a dig at George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he questioned whether ‘enough has been done to ensure “we are all in this together”.’ In his reply, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, wrote: ‘Today [18 March] we agreed not to proceed with the policies in their current form.’ He was, therefore ‘puzzled and disappointed’. Mr Cameron’s letter also pointed out: ‘We are on different sides in the vital debate about the future of Britain’s relations with Europe.’ Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘Europe has nothing to do with this — that is a deliberate attempt to put something out there that discredits me.’