Failed Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith named Boris Johnson’s campaign chairman

Iain Duncan Smith. Photo: PA - Credit: PA Archive/PA Images

Iain Duncan Smith, who was ousted from the job of Tory party leadership because he wasn’t deemed an election winner, has been appointed Boris Johnson’s campaign chairman.

The choice of outspoken Brexiteer Duncan-Smith is likely to alarm the more moderate Conservative MPs that have backed Johnson.

Duncan-Smith was the Conservative Party leader following William Hague’s resignation in 2001, and served until November 2003, when MPs passed a vote of no confidence believing he could not win a general election. He was replaced by Michael Howard and became a backbench MP until David Cameron came to power.

He recently complained that he had not been taken to court like Boris Johnson for false claims made about Brexit.

Those false claims include those that led to the former boss of the World Trade Organisation pulling a face behind the politician on live television, and the suggestion that the public wants Brexit before the polls even opened for the European elections.

Pascal Lamy appears to mimick a unicorn behind Iain Duncan Smith’s back. Photograph: BBC. – Credit: Archant

Some of his most recent claims about Brexit were even rebuked by Stephen Fry.

A YouGov poll of Tory members recently found that Iain Duncan-Smith and William Hague were rated two of the most favourable post-war party leaders, despite never winning a general election.

Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery said: “Boris Johnson launched his campaign with a tax cut for the rich, then boasted about being the biggest defender of the bankers who crashed our economy.

“Now he has appointed the architect of Tory attacks on the poor, sick and disabled as his campaign chief. Johnson is for an elite few, not the many.”