WEB EXCLUSIVE: Full-length interview with IDS

I have interviewed Iain Duncan Smith for tomorrow’s Spectator. In print, space is always tight and we kept it to 1,500 words. One of the beauties of online is that you can go into detail in political debate that you never could with print: facts, graphs (my guilty pleasure) and quotes. Here is a 2,300-word version of the IDS interview, with subheadings so CoffeeHousers can skip the parts that don’t interest them. I’ve known him for years, and remember how hard it was to get out of his room four years ago when he started on the subject of gang culture and the merits early intervention. Now, he’s in the DWP, able to enact all he spoke about. He believes the riots will transform Cameron’s premiership in the same way that 9-11 did Blair’s. Britain as a country, he says, is in the last-chance saloon. The riots were a warning: not a crisis, but a prelude to a crisis unless they are fixed.