I AM writing this column from home, as I always do. Beside me sits a cup of hot, sweet tea. My kitchen is less than 20ft away and, once I’ve finished this, I’ll wander through and cook up some square sausage to start the day off properly.

My home working predates the pandemic. It makes sense to me and fits in well with my unagreeable and grouchy personality. I don’t crave the buzz of people around me.

I have no need for office banter or team-bonding away days. In recent years I’ve turned down jobs that would have fattened my bank balance but encroached on my ability to work from home.

It’s only me and my seven-year-old daughter in our house. Kids, in case you haven’t noticed, are notoriously inflexible. I feel lucky to do a job that gives me the freedom to pick her up from school whenever she bumps her head, or keep her off when one of the many bugs of childhood comes knocking at our door. Her dad doesn’t have a job that he can do from home. His workday is far more regimented than mine. He earns more money but I don’t need to get dressed if I don’t want to, so I think we all know who the real winner is here.

READ MORE: Kwasi Kwarteng: Boris Johnson's Costa del Sol holiday during gas crisis 'reasonable'

During the pandemic, the UK adapted to the kind of flexible home working that has been my normal for so long. Some found this new way of working hugely beneficial for their families. Others couldn’t wait to get back to the office.

That’s why the debates about remote versus in-person working are so tedious. They are built on the false premise of universality – good or bad, help or hindrance.

As businesses and employers grapple with whether to summon their staff back to the office, the emphasis should be on choice.

Iain Duncan Smith disagrees. In a piece for the Mail on Sunday, the Tory MP urges workers to get off Zoom and back into the office. To illustrate his point, he harks back to nostalgic tropes and the “Keep Calm and Carry On” ethos of wartime Britons.

“When I think of all the brave civil servants who went to work in the 1940s, determined to do their bit regardless of the threat from falling bombs, I wonder what has happened to us as a nation” he muses.

What has happened to us as a nation since the 1940s? Why are we not doing everything in our power to harness that wartime spirit now, as we face a totally different enemy at a totally different time? And why does this apple not taste like a butternut squash?

Duncan Smith’s misty-eyed rhetoric would be funny if it wasn’t so disingenuous.

Having a stiff upper lip doesn’t change the facts. Coronavirus is a highly infectious, airborne virus. Lockdown was a policy introduced by his party in government and enforced by law. It wasn’t some clever wheeze by lazy workers who were trying to avoid their daily commute.

Yet now, after doing everything that was asked of them, and enduring incredible financial and emotional hardship along the way, Duncan Smith blames workers for the economic fallout of the last 18 months. He blames ordinary people and struggling businesses for – among other things – the dying ecosystem of our cities, the fate of coffee shops and – boldly – the HGV driver crisis. It’s a neat trick, when you think about it. As the UK lurches from one crisis to the next and his boss – our Prime Minister – shows himself to be utterly incapable of dealing with the unfolding chaos, now is the perfect time to try to shift the blame.

Boris Johnson isn’t an irresponsible charlatan, workers are just lazy. The UK Government hasn’t allowed its obsession with immigration to fatally wound our economy, workers just aren’t buying enough pumpkin spiced lattes.

As the architect of the punitive Universal Credit system, Duncan Smith was responsible for inflicting misery and hardship on thousands of low-paid, sick and disabled people.

READ MORE: Upbeat Boris Johnson will never have to choose between heating and eating

His instincts are always to punch down and that’s exactly what he does in this ludicrous column.

He looks at workers trying to juggle the challenges of home and work and sees indulgence. He reads a tweet about a worker who now uses their lunch break to do some gardening and he sees an employee who is pampered and spoiled.

He hears about parents being able to spend a bit more time with their kids and decides that the world has gone mad and something must be done.

Iain Duncan Smith might be stuck in the 1940s, but the world, thankfully, has moved on.

Some will be glad to be back in the office. Others will want to continue with remote working. That decision should be a matter for a worker and their employer, not out-of-touch politicians such as Duncan Smith.