Inside the Coalition: Iain Duncan Smith was 'not clever enough' claimed Osborne Duncan Smith had agreed to take the Work and Pensions job because he believed (correctly) that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to translate at least some of his social vision into reality and to take on the culture of welfare dependency. But he had not fully grasped the extent to which Osborne would loom over everything he did and tried to do. Nor did he have an inkling of the ferocious turf war that would soon rage between the two of them. It mattered that party and public alike should believe that the Coalition was united on welfare reform. So it was a poor start to the 2010 Tory conference when Duncan Smith was completely caught off guard by Osborne's announcement that higher-rate taxpayers would now lose child benefit. Suddenly faced by a bank of cameras, the Work and Pensions Secretary improvised as much as he could, while his media adviser, Susie Squire, did her best not to be knocked over by the scrum of reporters. Child benefit cut? For the middle classes? What was happening? IDS replied: "I'm going to find out." Duncan Smith felt excluded and driven to the margins. He believed he had been made to look foolish, bounced into a radical decision on a deeply sensitive issue, and that what seemed bold on Monday might look reckless on Tuesday. Cuts to the £12 billion child benefit bill had certainly been discussed as part of a much broader debate on the future of welfare. But - as far as IDS was concerned - the moment had not arrived for a definitive announcement. Part of the problem was that child benefit was not administered by the DWP but by the Treasury. Technically, Osborne was not treading on his colleague's toes at all - which only aggravated the latter's anger. In the first weeks of the Coalition, Duncan Smith had made a bid to take control of this particular benefit but had been seen off by Osborne, who knew a land-grab when he saw one. Indeed, by conference, the Work and Pensions Secretary felt that the Treasury was essentially treating his own department as an annex. He warned Osborne of this "power trip" and chafed at the constant reminders, explicit and implicit, that child benefit was part of his empire. "You say you control child benefit, George," he said. But we're a government. The Chancellor was certainly taking a risk in his conference speech, though a calculated one. The means-testing of child benefit would have disagreeable consequences for 1.2 million higher-income families. But its symbolic impact would be much greater. Or so, at least, Osborne's internal critics claimed. What the Chancellor presented as an example of Coalition "fairness," they interpreted as an intolerable assault upon Tory principles - doubly offensive, since it supposedly penalised those who worked hard and did well, and (it was claimed) undermined support for the family. The backlash in Birmingham was something to behold: an eruption of fury from which, it sometimes seemed, Osborne's relationship with the Right-of-centre press and some sections of the party might never truly recover. Tories who had for years, and in some cases decades, argued for cuts and railed against handouts had suddenly discovered the social democrat within. The withdrawal of child benefit from those who earned £44,000 p.a. or more was presented as an atrocity, a betrayal or both. For Duncan Smith, the episode had a more specific significance. Politically bold as it was, Osborne's announcement struck him as personally evasive. He considered the Chancellor to be the polar opposite of Ken Clarke, with whom he felt he could have a good-natured confrontation without imperilling their working relationship. In contrast, he felt that Osborne liked to make a decision and act upon it without lengthy consultation. The Chancellor regarded the Coalition as one long consultation - the matching of "yellow bricks and blue bricks" - and was certainly not afflicted by a deep sense of penitence after the conference spat. More than any of his colleagues, he expected the Government in general to become unpopular with uncommon speed and to be vilified himself no less quickly. He was right on both counts. The corollary was impatience with those ministers who - as he saw it - complained and moaned about everything. According to his own private audit, Duncan Smith had resisted more or less every Treasury initiative. "He opposes every cut," Osborne complained to one friend. Nor was he confident that IDS had the IQ. "You see Iain giving presentations," he confided in allies, "and realise he's just not clever enough." Duncan Smith believed that Osborne had been captured by the Treasury and its institutional arrogance. "I can see his whole sense of government changing," he told colleagues. He's not a gambler at all.