If you were looking for the most wantonly sarcastic epithet in British politics, you might well alight on “Iain Duncan Smith, the architect of universal credit”. It’s basically impossible to say out loud without putting “architect” in air quotes. I know we shouldn’t underestimate the determination of a quiet man. But when people say, “Iain always brings the house down”, what they mean is that everyone gets buried in the rubble.

Would you stay in a hotel that advertised Iain Duncan Smith as its architect? You certainly wouldn’t bother asking when breakfast was served. If things went well, you’d be standing outside in a foil blanket at 3am, rebuffing requests to do 10 minutes at the top of Good Morning Britain. If things went as expected, you wouldn’t.

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Duncan Smith was always that most dangerous type of politician: the sort who thinks that very complicated things are actually very simple. Though universal credit’s “architect” took himself off the project a while back, he still turns up at the site in his pants every now and then, screaming something about the need to add a fire escape. While embarrassing for everyone, this is probably something we ought to listen to.

This week, Iain was demanding the Treasury urgently inject an extra £2bn into the new benefits system, to replace the £2bn slashed from the scheme three years ago. Will it? It is unclear at this stage. The government insists it is pressing on with the rollout of universal credit, no matter how many times their own MPs, other MPs, their own former prime ministers, other former prime ministers and countless actual voters whose lives it affects, explain to them what a shitstorm it’s going to be, or indeed already is. This week, the work and pensions secretary, Esther McVey, reportedly told cabinet colleagues that some families – or “customers”, to use the preferred term – will be £200 a month worse off.

Still, I am dying to know who Esther’s publicist is. According to the Times, charities and companies working with universal credit claimants have been made to sign a gagging clause to protect the work and pensions secretary’s reputation. There is genuinely a “publicity” clause in the contract between them and the department, which states that the organisations “shall pay the utmost regard to the standing” of the secretary of state, and “shall not do anything which may damage [her]; bring [her] into disrepute; attract adverse publicity to [her]; or harm the confidence of the public in [her]”.

Is this … normal? We know the Conservatives are the self-styled party of free speech. Even so, it does seem the height of snowflakery for the secretary of state to demand those working for her sign the political equivalent of a non-disclosure agreement. You’d expect a Hollywood megastar’s people to try it on, to protect their client from inquiries about the fact he shags animals on crystal meth, or whatever. But it does seem like something we ought generally to avoid in the politics of the welfare state.

In many ways, though, no one is as adept at dragging McVey into disrepute as McVey herself. In July, she was formally reprimanded by the head of the National Audit Office for misleading parliament about its criticisms of the universal credit rollout, and issued a non-apology for “inadvertently” doing so. This week – presumably advertently – she broke the government line and claimed: “I have said we made tough decisions and some people will be worse off.” Or as Esther put it less than a fortnight ago in her party conference speech: “Those who say we are cutting budgets are peddling fake news.” What to believe, other than the worst?

As a side note, I do advise you to keep a paper record of everyone who specifically dismisses criticism with Donald Trump’s most famous phrase – from all of Trump’s winged monkeys to Tory cabinet ministers to Jeremy Corbyn. That way you’ll have something to burn for warmth once they get what they think they want. To those politicians and cheerleaders who dismiss criticism peremptorily as “fake news”, I would say only: if you wouldn’t use Trump’s second most famous phrase – “grab them by the pussy” – maybe think twice about legitimising the rest of his dangerous bullshit. Or is it simply too tempting? His playbook, I mean, not the pussy-grabbing. Either way, we can divide the world into two tribes: people who cry “fake news”, and people who aren’t metaphorical pussy-grabbers. Esther McVey is in the former category, clearly – and since her boyfriend is quarterwitted men’s rights MP Philip Davies, this is hardly a surprise.

Meanwhile, I am very much enjoying all the Next-Gen Tories putting their markers down this week, reminding Britain that there is a young and vibrant squad out there just itching to take us all the way once the new manager finally calls time on the golden generation. Take the Plymouth MP Johnny Mercer, who also urged the cuts to the system to be reversed but this week tweeted: “Biggest challenge with UC is the bad press it gets (some self-inflicted obvs).”

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No matter how hard you love that “obvs”, given the grim stories of impoverished crisis that it blithely obvses over, it feels difficult to claim that the main problem with universal credit is the media. I hate to break it to Johnny, but they’re not all reading the Guardian, dear, which has been boringly obsessed with it for years. “The media” has been mostly giving a shit about a Strictly snog this week, so the universal credit story mostly still has “cut-through” with claimants whose lives it has cut through. That will change with the full rollout, at which point every single cabinet minister will need to snog a Strictly star to have a hope of distracting from it.

Still, the D-notice will probably hold to the bitter end in some quarters. Let’s conclude with a shoutout to George Osborne, the very man who slashed the £2bn that Duncan Smith wants put back into universal credit. Osborne, the former chancellor, is now a Potemkin newspaper editor, and rather more interested in publishing pointless power lists than articles questioning why, for instance, a London single mother, in work, has to resort to using food banks under the new system. The London Evening Standard hasn’t really bothered covering universal credit, preferring to spend most of this week telling you who the capital’s 1,000 most influential people apparently are. I can’t believe the editor didn’t make the list. I know he’s not a leading mixologist or anything, but considering how many lives his policies have influenced, do let’s hope he scores a mention in next year’s dispatches, when his legacy will be all the clearer.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist