Iain Duncan Smith admits Rishi Sunak D-Day blunder ‘damaging’ for Conservative Party

In brief...

• Constituents in Chingford and Woodford Green tell The News Agents they want change but are not heavily committed to Keir Starmer's Labour.
• Iain Duncan Smith defends his tenure, emphasising his commitment to constituents and says if his role was just "a career" he would have stepped down a long time ago.
• Faiza Shaheen, who narrowly lost to Iain Duncan Smith in 2019, was replaced by Shama Tatler, who claims the constituency's loyalty lies with Labour.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith admits the past four years of Conservative leadership has resulted in a “loss of trust” from the public with the party’s government.

He told The News Agents that events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis would have “sidetracked” any government, but say the Tories have been judged on how the party behaved through that period.

“People look back on that and realise you were in government at the time, and all the in-fighting that took place, and that’s what happens when things aren’t going right, everyone needs to find an instantaneous solution,” Duncan Smith told Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel in his constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green, London.

The former Tory leader also admitted that the voting public did not appreciate the “chaos” that has taken place within Conservative ranks during the past few years of government.

“Chaos reigned because of external problems, and that resulted in internal problems,” he said.“It’s been a peculiar four years. I’ve never seen anything like it, ever”

He added that the idea of leaving D-Day celebrations in France early, as Rishi Sunak did in early June, “wouldn’t have occurred” to him.

When Sopel quizzed him on whether he could “rationalise” the decision to do so, Duncan Smith answered with a simple: “No”.

“What happens in all these things, is you’re under intense pressure during a campaign and you’re being called to do this, do that. The team around you gets too fixated on the next thing you’ve got to do.”

“This was damaging. He knows it, we all know it. It could have been avoided.”

But despite this misstep, Duncan Smith was full of praise for the former Prime Minister.

“I have a lot of time for Rishi,” he added. “He’s a genuine individual who wants to do the right thing. He’s not just about himself. I think he genuinely believes he can do the right thing.”

When speaking to people in his constituency, Maitlis and Sopel heard one word repeatedly: change.

But this desire for change doesn’t mean a guaranteed swing in Chingford and Woodford Green to Duncan Smith’s Labour rival, with Sopel explaining they had seen no “heavy commitment to Keir Starmer, but the desire for change is profound.”

Duncan Smith said the opinion of his constituents “doesn’t mean a government has to change, it means something has to change”.

At one point, it looked like that change could come in the form of Faiza Shaheen, standing in Chingford and Woodford Green in 2024 as an independent after being deselected by the Labour Party after complaints about her social media activity.

Shaheen narrowed Iain Duncan Smith’s majority in the constituency to just 1,262 in 2019 and was tipped to unseat him in 2024.

Her replacement, Shama Tatler, insists voting intention in the constituency reflects loyalty to Labour, not Shaheen.

“It’s a two-horse race in this constituency,” Tatler told The News Agents. “There’s a residual loyalty to the Labour Party.”

And while Tatler refers to Iain Duncan Smith as a “good constituency MP”, she criticises him for lack of progress rebuilding the local hospital, and failing to deliver on a promise of more local policing.

But Duncan Smith insists that loyalty to his constituents is what has kept him passionate about his role as the Chingford and Woodford Green MP since 1992.

“This is not a career, this is a vocation,” he added. “I came into politics because I cared about the people I represent.”

“If this was a career, I’d have been gone a long time ago.”

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