Knighting Britain’s real-life Scrooge Iain Duncan Smith exposes our honours system for the sham it is

Arise, Sir Ebenezer

Even before it was leaked, anybody with a macabre interest in shiny-pated sweethearts knew Iain Duncan Smith’s address.

For the benefit of latecomers to this mirthless party, Duncan Smith lives in a Buckinghamshire mansion owned until his recent death by his father-in-law, the fifth Baron Cottesloe.

He has never paid rent on the sumptuous home (nor tax on its vacant bedrooms) in which this rarefied benefits scrounger conceived universal credit.