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Even in opposition, he argued that the U.K. Conservatives needed to broaden their focus beyond the economy, immigration and Europe.

“You cannot win if people think that’s all you’re about,” he told me when he last visited Ottawa in 2008.

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When the Conservatives were elected to lead Britain’s coalition, he was handed the task of implementing the welfare reforms he’d pioneered as head of his own Centre for Social Justice.

He says there have been concrete economic and political benefits to confounding the expectation that Conservatives don’t care about the poor.

In an interview, he pointed to the employment rate in the U.K. of 73.2% (compared to 61.4% in Canada), which even the Bank of England attributes to the government introducing conditions on unemployment benefits.

“A huge part of getting people back to work has been to get them to sign a contract that says they are not unemployed, in the sense that they are employed by the state to find work,” he said. That conditionality — that claimants have a responsibility to the taxpayer, in return for support — has been extended to disability benefits and other areas of the welfare system. Mr. Duncan Smith — IDS, to one and all — said the reforms are aimed at bringing an end to the “something-for-nothing” culture.

The result is that the U.K. is experiencing record levels of employment, particularly among women and the disabled. Youth and long-term unemployment is also falling. He said his reforms have already saved £50 billion ($95 billion) in the past five years.