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The Tories’ tax credit cut will cause problems for them in 2020

osborne red facedIt’s proven to be the closest shave of Dave’s second term and would have thrown the government into chaos had the ayes won it. Tonight’s vote in the Commons, brought before the House by Labour, saw the noes (i.e. keep the cuts to working tax credits) win by 317 to 295 – a tiny sliver of a margin. This is despite Tory luminaries like Boris Johnson weighing in against the cuts, and Heidi Allen – new Tory member for South Cambridgeshire – using her maiden speech to strongly intone that “to pull ourselves out of debt, we should not be forcing those working families into it.” And yet talk of a Tory rebellion proved to be tough talk, no trousers. To a woman and a man our would-be insurgents lined up behind George Osborne and endorsed the policy they had spent all day attacking. We always knew their workers’ party rhetoric was flim-flam, but the Tories are going to have a tougher time selling that now. 

While the decision to announce Seumas Milne’s appointment as Labour’s new head of comms deflects media attention from the government’s difficulties, away from Westminsterland the tax credits cut will, is, eroding the support won by the Tories’ round of promises and scaremongering back in May. According to Labour’s research, the numbers set to lose money and their geographical spread puts some 70-odd Tory seats at risk. 2020 is a long way away, but voters do not forget. Small business people like Michelle Dorrell, whose brief Question Time intervention made a very big political splash, aren’t supposed to be punished. There is some question whether she will directly see a cut, but she’s well aware that many of her customers will be so affected and that places her livelihood in some jeopardy. Whatever happens, the stress and anxiety Michelle has experienced won’t slip her in a hurry.

And this is problematic for the Tories. The Conservative love-in with the Liberal Democrats did many dark things, but they were choosy about their victims. Seizing hold of the neo-Victorian distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor that had been circulating in the press and policy documents for years, Dave and his little yellow friends set about making the poorest pay for the 2008-9 crash. But those poorest were the ones at best unseen, at worst despised. The unemployed, the disabled, the single parents, the long-term sick, people in social housing, people needing council tax support. Osborne anticipated Labour would have problems opposing Tory/LibDem attacks seeing as the party had gone along with scrounger rhetoric at least since His Blairness was at the helm, and that antipathy toward the undeserving poor was, perversely enough, most acute among the “deserving”, working poor– the supposed bedrock of Labour’s support. To batter the poorest and most vulnerable for electoral gain, it was some of the most disgusting cynicism seen in recent years (though there was a bit more to it as well).

Yet Osborne, the alleged ‘political genius’ responsible for the coalition of voters that gave him and Dave a majority, has now sprung a trap on himself. He’s forgotten that while you can get away with grinding the ‘undeserving’ into the dirt with nary a comment, let alone protest; taking on the working poor is another matter. When you go out to work, you do the so-called ‘right thing’, to be penalised for such is just not on. It threatens to blow away those wispy myths sometimes referred to as Tory principles, it cuts at the party’s self-help ethos, it stamps on the hand up/not-a-handout approach to social security. Small wonder so many on the right are up in arms. More importantly, it’s making Tory voters not necessarily affected queasy. One voted Tory to sort out the fag-smoking pushchair-pushing scummy mummies always down the offie, not one’s personal trainer, one’s window cleaner, one’s hairdresser. Osborne has proven adept in building a coalition alright, a coalition ranging all the way from the Trotskyist far left through the mainstream parties, to hard right ideologues and the ever-opportunistic ‘libertarians’ in UKIP opposed to his policy.

The Tories have a record of being political stupidity, but usually that’s a result of their being entirely shortsighted and not thinking through the medium and long-term interests of their own party, and the sections of British business they represent. On this occasion Osborne is set on machine gunning his own foot. That said, there is an element of “necessity” in what the Tories are trying to do. When Dave and co. exclaim the virtues of a low tax, high waged, low welfare economy they mean it: this is their objective, the tiger in their politics tank. In the long-run they think people who get by with the help of tax credits will benefit. Without the state subsidising employers, wage rates would have to adjust properly to their “natural” level, which is way above where they are at present – a point on which most of the left would agree. Hence the comparatively large minimum wage rise, but other indirect subsidies to employers – such as raising income tax thresholds so workers’ (low) wages can go a little bit further. Typical of the Tories though, they’re handling it in a brutal, stupid way. Yes, some people would suffer in the short-term but we know what’s best for them in the long-run is the not-so-subtle message Tory ministers have so far communicated.

That is the background, but also there’s Osborne’s leadership ambitions. He absolutely has to dig his heels in and tough the policy out. As one half of a duo that think themselves “strong” and capable of taking “difficult” decisions, carrying tax credit cuts through in the teeth of internal, press, Labour, and wider opposition burnishes, in his eyes, his leadership credentials. Silly George, little does he realise that convincing leadership is about winning minds and getting people to follow because they believe, not because you can bulldoze your way through regardless. Still, if he wants to sacrifice the electoral wellbeing of his party on the altar of his career, I’m not about to stop him.

And so the Tories are in a pickle entirely of their own making. Electoral punishment of some sort will be administered, and they’ve gone toxic to a whole wave of people they need to win over permanently if they want to win again. Yet at no point can Osborne pull out, lest his chances as Dave’s successor be torpedoed. Their position is weak, they can be forced to retreat in the face of the chancellor’s intransigence, and that is up to whatever pressure we can bring to bear.

This post first appeared at All That Is Solid 

5 Comments

  1. Jim says:

    An utterly delusional article. The author has spent too much time on Twitter and in the company of his own kind. It’s like the SNP Yes campaign all over again.

    The basis for the claim that 71 seats under threat was that “those seats … have more families who are set to lose substantial sums than was the size of their (Tory) majority last May”. Seriously, how many people on tax credits will change their vote from Tory to Labour on the strength of these cuts? How many people on tax credits vote Tory anyway?

    Is this article solely premised on one woman’s outrage on Question Time? I am close to despair if this is the level of debate we can expect over the next 50 months.

    Oh, and the Tory record of “political stupidity” has given them 40 years out of the last 70 in power, (and possibly 10 more up to 2025) so, not so stupid then?

  2. Bazza says:

    Yes Osborne is Vatman and Robbing!

  3. J.P. Craig-Weston says:

    My old constituency MP Micheal Meacher died yesterday.

    He was an man who despite his personal wealth remained untainted by the corruption and graft that so often pollute modern British politics and was an untiring advocate of the rights and interests of his constituents and a man for whom I and most other people in Oldham felt nothing but pride, respect, and genuine affection.

    He was also someone who manged to engage with ordinary voters, (such as myself,) in a way that Left Futures and all these often pompous and tedious wind-bags such as Phil Burton-Cartledge completely fail to; both by direct personal contact, (I remember how frail he seemed when he was out canvassing one of our most deprived areas a few years back,) and by a lively and interesting personal blog that ran for many years, through which he persuaded me at least, that there might, (all evidence to contrary,) yet be some point in engaging in political discussion and debate.

    A hope that is now rapidly fading along with the brief optimism of the JC’s, (who was nominated my Meacher among others,) election.

    It actually broke my heart that at the last election, despite and notwithstanding all that I was in all conscience still unable to vote for him, (and by extension the rotten post Blair Labour party exemplified by Chucka Umuna, Rachele Reeves, Kendell and the all the other hard core right wing Tories that still command the committees, the agenda and Labour, (in most respects Tory,) policy.

    I’m sure there will be finer and far better written eulogies than this to a genuinely decent and admirable man and a genuine and committed socialist, but I wanted to say my piece here and now.

    This couldn’t have come a worse time either.

    1. J.P. Craig-Weston says:

      It probably says much that although I’m not involved in local politics in any way or at any level that nonetheless in the space of a hour I received 4 texts, (I don’t use Facebook or Twitter,) from people that I know, (and that I know voted for JC,) expressing their sorrow and letting me know that Mr Meacher had died.

  4. Robert says:

    He’s doing it now knowing he has five years to recover.

    And labour has to show it can govern, and this is going to take some doing .

    Labour simple after the boundary chances will have little chance of winning because of these changes.

    The next four years are going to be massive and if labour has anymore cock ups as they did not to long ago with a complete U turn then the Tories will win.

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