Anthony Painter says Iain Duncan Smith has gone from being an almost anonymous Tory leader to the biggest threat yet to Labour’s reputation for tackling poverty

HE MADE his name as a Eurosceptic outrider during John Major’s administration. His leadership of the Conservative Party was disastrous. He only became leader by virtue of the fact that he wasn’t Kenneth Clarke or Michael Portillo. No leader of a major political party in living memory has made less of an impact on the political landscape. And, yet, Iain Duncan Smith could just become the most important leader of the Tories since Margaret Thatcher.

The work he has done at his Centre for Social Justice is critical to the Conservative revival. In fact, it is the substantive element to the revival and Labour ignores it at its peril. Duncan Smith may be forgotten by history. The impact of his work almost certainly will not be.

The Centre’s monumental Breakthrough Britain report, and its offspring focusing

on individual cities, analyse significant and concentrated pockets of poverty and social exclusion which dangerously undermine the Government’s case that Labour is the party to fight poverty most effectively. The reports compile a stack

of credible and pertinent information.

At a recent Centre for Social Justice debate, the audience was not the usual Tory wonks, lobbyists, a spattering of business people and media hangers-on. It was a room full of people from the voluntary sector: domestic violence and rape support charities, drug rehabilitation groups, and disability campaigners. It is worth adding that the late middle-aged lady dressed in navy blue with her hair in a bun who complained that ethnic minority groups get all the cash was met with disdain.

The Centre for Social Justice opens the Conservative Party to a whole new audience and it appears to be an audience that is ready to listen. In the spirit of this, it has established a “Poverty Fighters’ Alliance” to “put social justice at the heart of British politics” the implication being that it is not there already

There is no credit given to Labour for the national minimum wage, tax credits, increases in child benefit or the fact that the poorest 10 per cent of households have seen their incomes rise by 12.4 per cent as a result of the Government tax and benefit changes, while the next poorest 10 per cent have seen a similar rise. But that’s not the Centre’s agenda.

So, while it may be non-partisan and independent in its constitution, the Centre is most definitely far from non-partisan in its impact. Moreover, non-partisan does not mean non-ideological.

The recently published Breakthrough London, while failing to get to get to grips with perpetuating cycles of poverty, does map social exclusion and its consequences (crime, unemployment, family breakdown, drug abuse) quite succinctly.

But very quickly we get onto ideological ground. Based on polling evidence (that is not included in the report, funnily enough), it sweepingly concludes: “People living in disadvantaged communities are more likely to engage with voluntary rather than public sector organisations; in some communities, trust in state services is very low.”

Really? People don’t trust their local school, college or health services? There is a distinct impression here that the argument is using the voluntary sector as a battering ram to undermine state provision.

Breakthrough London goes into detail about worklessness in the capital. Shockingly, more than 40 per cent of people in four London boroughs are workless. In another example of ideological posturing, one of the report’s proposals is for the re-introduction of the married couples’ allowance. By definition, this only helps taxpayers. Basically, it is a middle-class tax break. What we are dealing with here are old Tory hobby horses with a new varnish. David Cameron has already adopted the “family-friendly” agenda pretty much wholesale. There is something quite distasteful about selling middle-class politics using the most deprived in society.

Just as Cameron has sought to undermine Labour’s record on the National Health Service, this work gives the Tories the ammunition they need to dent Labour’s reputation for acting on social justice.

The Government’s response to deprivation is often fragmented: skills policy pulling in one direction, with welfare policy pulling in another and tax in yet another. Often the impact is simply to pull the oil tanker around rather than forward. Without a new synthesis, the Tories will make hay and it is the Centre for Social Justice that is tending to the crop.

Labour cannot afford to concede this ground to the Conservatives. This is not just a political point. It is a social one. The package of policies proposed by the likes of the Centre for Social Justice are usually either irrelevant or, in many cases, deeply harmful. Labour needs a new and convincing approach to breaking the poverty cage in Britain.

It cannot afford to focus too narrowly on “child poverty” or abstractions such as “equality”. Rather more important is to articulate an all-encompassing vision of society where what befalls the least powerful in society impacts on us all.

There needs to be rhetoric of: “We are all in this together”. This is not charity. It’s about creating a harmonious, secure, prosperous and creative society. It can’t simply be equality of opportunity. It needs to be far more active than that. There must be relentless and beneficial social intervention through good and consistent policy and the continuous commitment of the state, civil society and individuals to improve conditions for all. It is about creating a good society that supports all, because that benefits us all.

This is not just about fighting “child poverty”, or achieving “equality”, or “creating social justice”. It is all those things, but none of them quite hit the mark in and of themselves. People have to buy into this. The Conservative approach requires nothing of them. It makes Cameron look like he cares, but there is no sacrifice required and it will achieve little. Labour needs to challenge people to go further.

So there is a chance to deny Duncan Smith his anonymous place in history – but only if Labour responds with vision, unity, confidence, and sound policy. If it gets this right, then rather than the most important leader of the Conservative Party since Thatcher, he will once again become the quiet man of British politics.

Anthony Painter’s blog, e8voice, can be read at www.anthonypainter.co.uk