Iain Duncan Smith: Cameron would not serve full second term

The second term fiasco heats up

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader and the secretary of state for the Department of work and Pensions, has suggested that David Cameron would not serve a full second term if he was re-elected in May.

This contradicts the prime minister’s own assertions he would stay in the role “the full five years” of a potential second term, and risks unnerving Tory voters ahead of the election.

(Cameron has recently announced that he would not serve a third term if he was re-elected this year.)

Duncan Smith told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday that Cameron would have to stand down before the end of a second term to allow the next Conservative leader to take up the role before the next election (expected in 2020).

Marr asked Duncan Smith if Cameron would need to call the leadership contest before the end of a potential second term. Duncan Smith replied: “He does. But I have huge faith in the prime minister… He will do what he says. He will serve what is essentially a full term.

“Of course there will have to be a competition at some point.  But that will be a competition on the back of a successful prime minister doing something that most prime ministers have never done before – saying: ‘I know when it’s time to go’.

“You’ve had to literally rap the knuckles of people like Gordon Brown and previous prime ministers to get them to think of going, but he’s actually very keen to say: ‘There is a limit, there’s an amount of time a prime minister should serve before they get stale’. And he is right about that.”