My thoughts go out to Iain Duncan Smith tonight because, if I were him, I’d be feeling rather frustrated. Over the last week, he has been grossly misquoted and misrepresented by media and politicians alike.

Speaking as an ardent socialist, I naturally believe that there are plenty of evils associated with a Tory-led coalition, but Iain Duncan Smith is not one.  Few cabinet politicians, ever, have been as knowledgeable and astute as him in their field; few have been as fit for the post they are serving as IDS is for his.

Following years of research, IDS and others concluded that Britain’s workforce is too static. That is to say, people remain unemployed because there is not enough of an incentive for them to leave their immediate locality and attempt to find work. A return bus ticket can become an unjustifiable expense.

He has been talking of the need to make it socially and financially viable for people to get to a workplace, or even move house if they are prepared to do so. But only if they wish to.

This has been wildly misconstrued, completely deliberately, to suggest that IDS believes the unemployed are too indolent to get a job, and must be coerced into moving house to fill a vacant job position.

Take a look at the Mirror’s coverage – see ‘Work Secretary Iain Duncan Smith unveils extreme Norman Tebbit-style policy for jobless‘ and ‘Iain Duncan Smith’s advice to struggling families: Let them wear hand-me downs‘. The former even attempts to use a distant familial connection to Princess Diana on his part to indicate that he is of a class which does not care for the ordinary British citizen.

I suppose we expect this of the media; tabloids routinely wholly fabricate stories or construct extreme arguments which are distantly grounded in a mere slither of truth.

But we should expect better of senior Labour politicians. This is Ed Balls’s reaction to IDS’s argument:

“The remarks suggest that he’s thinking of taking away the housing tenure, the right to a social house and saying you’ve got to move.

So actually he’s going further than saying on your bike. It’s on your bike and lose your home.”

Here, we witness Ed Balls lying. This is simply NOT what Duncan Smith is saying, and is not even close. It is despicable that he and his shadow cabinet colleagues would dare to suggest this, and proof that Labour have a long way to go before learning why they have been booted out of power.

Thank god for the Independent, who remain true to their name. In an article entitled ‘Mr Duncan Smith deserves a hearing‘, they offer a brief and balanced analysis of what was actually being said.

Having heard (in person) Duncan-Smith’s argument and knowing about his years of work with the Institute of Social Justice, having witnessed his genuine sincerity and desire for social justice, I am absolutely appalled by the way that media and senior politicians have knowingly and misleadingly portrayed him as a snobbish tyrant.

The attacks on IDS represent exactly the kind of tribalist and pointless partisan politicking which actually prevents social progress in the UK. Labour politicians need to have the integrity to admit that he knows his stuff (which some will actually do); the media should have the integrity to represent him fairly; and the public need to see through this and understand the truth of his remarks.

Iain Duncan-Smith is a man with integrity, intelligence, and a desire to improve the lives of Britain’s less well off. He deserves the trust of the public, and should be left to do his job, free of this bullshit.