(posted 7239 days ago)Telegraph
Sketch
By Benedict Brogan
(Filed: 29/06/2004)Just like the old times as IDS takes centre stage
Iain Duncan Smith popped up yesterday to unveil a memorial to his brief leadership of the Conservative party. Seven months on from his forced removal, his followers gathered for a ceremony to open what they hope will be a monument to his legacy. It's a south London thinktank.Former American presidents get lavishly endowed libraries charting every minute of their administration; French presidents build themselves glass pyramids, wonky opera houses and national libraries that leak; in the heart of the African jungle there is an empty cathedral bigger than St Peter's built by a now-dead dictator.
On that basis Mr Duncan Smith might have hoped for a bit more than an office next to Lambeth Tube station. A cricket pavilion, perhaps, with some repro Corinthian columns stuck on the front. Or a Heathrow departure lounge, named after him, with reclining seats and free cough sweets.
He has struggled to be noticed since being so unceremoniously bundled out of the back door by his Parliamentary colleagues.
The Commons committee responsible for works of art abandoned plans to commission an official £10,000 portrait, the first time a former Opposition leader has been so snubbed. Obscurity seemed to be beckoning a touch too enthusiastically.
But not yesterday. It was just like old times.
He was among friends, the star attraction for more than 100 people who, like him, are little noticed and get no gratitude for their work on behalf of the poor and vulnerable.
Indeed, very few of those present were MPs.
The location, for true believers in IDS, was more than appropriate. Christ Church in Kennington has been a centre for non-conformist worship for more than two centuries. Wilberforce spoke there, and the spire was donated by Abraham Lincoln's family to acknowledge its support for abolition.
For an hour, in this modern church hall rebuilt after the Blitz, we were able to relive the highlights of the IDS years, a sort of "This was your Life" called for the opening of the Centre for Social Justice.
The old gang was there to cheer him on and the pews were packed with the community workers and activists he met on his visits to drug centres and youth homes up and down the country.
Nick Wood and Mike Penning, his press officers, were there to handle the media.
The two Annabels from his private office were on hand, as were Owen Patterson, his parliamentary aide, and Tim Montgomerie, once his private secretary and now the brains behind the CSJ, which as a mission will press the Tories to remember the less fortunate.
Betsy joined us as well, looking restored after the ordeal of a Commons inquiry into her affairs.
William Hague is on the board. Oliver Letwin spoke and is also on the board despite his close involvement in the events that led to Mr Duncan Smith's ejection. David Willetts, who clocked up nearly as many miles as IDS touring sink estates, turned up.
Even the rastafarians with the multi-coloured bonnets who livened up Mr Duncan Smith's last conference speech were there alongside community workers from Glasgow council estates.
Standing before a stained glass window commemorating prophets and preachers through the ages, IDS did not disappoint them.
His speech was full of the IDS trademarks Westminster has come to love: passion for his cause, enthusiasm for his party, words substituted at random, sentences that run on beyond their usefulness.
But it was his message - that politicians can no longer afford to ignore communities racked by alcohol and drug abuse - that mattered to his audience.
They know, as Westminster may be about to discover, that a strong idea coupled with dogged enthusiasm will achieve more than a plaque, a portrait, or a glistening library.