UK: Blow to Cameron as senior minister quits

LONDON

A senior British minister dramatically resigned on Friday night after describing government welfare cuts as “a compromise too far”.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said he was unable to continue in his role following demands by Finance Minister George Osborne to repeatedly “salami slice” welfare payments.

Smith had been told this week to cut up to £4 billion [$5.79bn] from benefits for people with disabilities.

But in a stinging resignation letter to Prime Minister David Cameron he said: “I have for some time and rather reluctantly come to believe that the latest changes to benefits to the disabled and the context in which they've been made, are a compromise too far.”

He said the governing Conservatives’ financial plans were designed to benefit higher-earning taxpayers and pensioners – traditionally part of the party’s voter base.

“I am unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self-imposed restraints that I believe are more and more perceived as distinctly political rather than in the national interest,” he said.

The resignation of a senior figure like Duncan Smith, a former party leader who opposes Britain’s membership of the European Union, will draw attention once more on the U.K. government’s precarious positon in parliament.

Cameron’s party has a House of Commons majority of just 17 seats and is a minority in the upper chamber, the House of Lords, making him vulnerable to rebellions from his own members.