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Great publicity but is he going off-message?

Andrew Grice
Saturday 25 May 2002 00:00 BST
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If it's Sunday, then it must be traditional right-wing Tory values. If it's Tuesday, it's time to speak Labour's language on education and proclaim equal opportunity for all. But if it's Thursday, it's right to put the boot in on asylum.

Iain Duncan Smith, who has sometimes struggled to win media attention since becoming Tory leader, has enjoyed a high-profile week. His aides say he won his best television coverage yet when he visited Hackney Community College in east London. He had his biggest hit in Prime Minister's questions when he embarrassed Tony Blair, who did not know that Stephen Byers was responsible for referendums.

Yet some senior Tories are worried that Mr Duncan Smith is sending too many conflicting messages. For some, the Tory leader marred a good week by taking a hard line on asylum, saying that none of the 1,300 refugees at the Sangatte camp should be allowed into Britain.

It was his toughest language on immigration since becoming Opposition leader, and tougher than that used by Oliver Letwin, the shadow Home Secretary, a key player in the Tories' drive to project a more tolerant, caring image.

Mr Duncan Smith judged that the crisis over Sangatte was too good an opportunity to miss and that his views would strike a chord. But some shadow ministers wondered whether he was repeating the mistake of William Hague, who preached to the Tory converted by hammering the asylum issue but made little headway in the political middle ground.

"It was a mistake to go hard on asylum," one Tory frontbencher said yesterday. "It conflicts with our strategy of campaigning on public services and standing up for the vulnerable. If you have a strategy, you have to stick to it." Another sighed: "This is Hague all over again."

There were other contradictions in a hectic week. On Sunday, Mr Duncan Smith opposed the plan to allow unmarried people, including gays, to adopt, pointing to figures showing that married couples had a much stronger chance of staying together.

He feels passionately about this but his stance appeared at odds with his drive to live in the world as it is rather than how the Tories would wish it to be. John Humphrys, the presenter of BBC's On the Record, accused the Tory leader of saying the 40 per cent of people in Britain who live as unmarried couples were not fit to adopt.

Mr Humphrys clashed again with Mr Duncan Smith three days later on Radio 4's Today. If "equal opportunity" in schools was his mission, the presenter asked, why did he not offer to raise spending in state schools to bring them up to the standard of Eton (where Mr Duncan Smith's eldest son is a pupil)? However, Tory strategists were delighted with their leader's keynote speech on education, saying his visit to Hackney won valuable television pictures. "You can't do much better than a black woman saying it's a good thing that he came," said one.

All the same, the Tories' private polling highlighted the challenge ahead. While the visit played well, some former Tory voters saw it as a stunt. Mr Duncan Smith's biggest problem is public cynicism about politics – he may yet be a casualty of Labour's obsession with spin.

The Tories believe his plain, straightforward image may prove an attractive alternative to Mr Blair. Friends say: "What you see with IDS is what you get." He is not about spin, as he showed last Saturday when he quietly visited the run-down Easterhouse estate in Glasgow for the second time – this time without cameras in tow – to chat to residents.

Aides insist there is no conflict with speaking up for the vulnerable and taking a robust line on asylum-seekers. They claim that painful lessons from the Hague era have been learnt. "We are not going to do asylum all the time," said one.

Mr Duncan Smith was back on message at the Welsh Tory conference in Llandudno. He said: "We are still trying to run our public services in the same way we did after the Second World War. The result is disastrous, and vulnerable people suffer most."

One Tory aide said: "It has been a good week, very positive. But we are under no illusions: we know we still have an awful long way to go."

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