NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE WRATH OF AN INADEQUATE MAN


You might think that Iain Duncan Smith is simply the least successful, and also perhaps the least distinguished, person to ever lead the Conservative Party. But you would be wrong, for Mr Smith affects to be an ‘expert’ on poverty. He bases this expertise on several visits to run-down council estates and his role in setting up a think tank, the grandly, if somewhat erroneously named Centre for Social Justice.
Mr Smith’s findings about poverty might be surprising to some. Money is not the solution he explains but is part of the problem; even making provision for basic subsistence creates something he calls ‘a dependency culture.’ Thus restricting any increase in benefits to below the rate of inflation is actually doing the poor an immense favour, educating them in the realities of the world; (though how the three year old child of a single parent can best absorb such education he does not explain). Mr Smith presents as somewhat irritated that the poor are not more vocal in their appreciation of the lengths he goes to respecting their welfare. Indeed it seems to take very little to irritate Mr Smith, who appears to operate on an extremely short fuse.

Now I have always been very wary of drawing on my past clinical experience in mental health and substance misuse when analysing the actions and motivations of politicians. However the furious reactions of Mr Smith to the recent intervention by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who criticised the government’s decision on benefits, making the unremarkable observation that taking money from the poor will drive them further into poverty. Mr Smith stamped his feet and performed a tantrum that would do credit to a cross five year old. “I’m the expert on poverty here, what does he know?”[1]  He hurls his sheaf of papers across the room and burst into frustrated tears.[2]

I think a client who exhibited such behavior I would characterize as being insecure, possibly to be experiencing feelings of inadequacy and low self esteem.
Mr Smith is I fear a man haunted by a sense of failure, who believes that his card has already been marked by the Prime Minister, who wanted to move him from his post, and who watches his cherished ‘welfare reforms‘ unravelling around his ankles. I would be moved to pity by his plight but again, drawing on my experience I am filled more with a sense of anxiety; such people invariably turn out to be dangerous.[3]



[1] I paraphrase somewhat.
[2] Poetic licence
[3] If any reader has detected a degree of malice in this article this is purely intentional.

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