This British conservative resigned from government over welfare cuts. American conservatives should take note.

Britain's conservative government has faced a minor disaster. One of its best ministers, Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions minister, has resigned to protest a new planned round of welfare cuts. More than a minor political crisis, this shows the dilemma at the heart of conservative governance.

But first, let's get the sense of the characters at play.

As a previous leader of the Conservative Party, "IDS", as he is known, is an elder statesman of Britain's right wing. But more importantly, he's the real deal: a competent politician who got into politics to serve. A devout Catholic, he spent his years in the backbenches leading a think tank, the Centre for Social Justice, that was focused on working with charities and non-governmental organizations to come up with innovative solutions to fight poverty. He's that rare conservative who doesn't just believe, as almost all of us do, that conservative principles first and foremost help the poor, but has actually put it at the center of his political vision. His policies were definitely right-wing — he believed the job of welfare policy was to push people into work, perhaps even reluctantly.

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IDS is out because he lost a power struggle with George Osborne, Britain's powerful "chancellor of the exchequer." If IDS is your cliché "bleeding-heart conservative," George Osborne seems to be that other conservative cliché: the heartless numbers man, who not only doesn't mind balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, but might even secretly think they have it coming. The cliché seems unfair to Osborne, but sometimes he seems to gleefully relish embodying it.

The British government decided to cut spending, something which I can only applaud. The question is: how? With the health budget ring-fenced and Britain's defense budget already cut to the bone at a time of international turmoil, there are basically only two large items left: welfare and pensions.

Here's where things get very cynical. As with those in most other advanced market democracies, British pensioners tend to be economically secure, and they wield disproportionate political influence because they turnout to vote in such high numbers. Plus, older people tend to be more conservative. Welfare recipients, not so much.

So Osborne wanted cuts to welfare, including to people with disabilities. IDS wanted cuts to wealthy pensioners. Osborne won and IDS is out.

The latter's resignation letter is quite eloquent. It deserves to be read in full, but here's a snippet:

Now, the problem that IDS cites isn't just Britain's problem. It's a problem for every conservative movement that wants to actually govern.

Every government is tempted to bribe its interest groups rather than do the politically difficult thing. Left-of-center governments have their own version of this choice, to be sure, but for right-of-center governments, it can be even more distasteful, since its interest groups tend to be those who are better-off in society, particularly the elderly, when conservatives are supposed to be for youthful, entrepreneurial dynamism. The Bush administration campaigned on limited government and created a new Medicare entitlement. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was swept into office promising to boost employment by cutting payroll taxes and cut inheritance taxes instead.

There's no easy fix or solution for this. It's a perennial dilemma of government. Conservatives who are out of power and would like to be in power some day better have a plan to confront it.