Tax credits: Has Osborne doomed his own MPs?
Look at those eyes: No humanity whatsoever.
It’s looking bad for the 71 Conservative MPs whose marginal seats may be in danger as a result of the attack on low-income earners that George Osborne’s tax credits cut represents.
Osborne won’t back down because he says £15 billion of spending cuts would have to be found elsewhere, otherwise.
The elephant in this particular room is the fact that tax credits are a supplement to the earnings of people who are deemed by the government not to be receiving enough from their employers.
The logical answer is to insist that those employers who are profiting hugely from depriving their workers of a living wage should rectify the situation at once. That would cut the tax credits bill massively.
Those employers who are unable to provide such security to their workforce (perhaps because their finances won’t be able to cover the cost) should be provided with information, advice and support to ensure that they grow into a position where they can raise wages.
It isn’t rocket science.
The sticking-point is the fact that the Conservative Government actively – avidly! – supports the impoverishment of working people. The fact that wages were reduced beyond the point at which they failed to cover workers’ outgoings under successive right-wing governments is a clear indication of this.
So 71 Tory MPs will be sent to the wolves in 2020. Alternatively, they may find their seats cut out from under them in any case, as the Conservative Government is working hard on gerrymandering constituency boundaries. Obviously, marginal Tory constituencies are likely to be dissolved to make way for safe Tory seats in the change, that will cut the number of constituencies from 650 to 600.
The moral of the story?
Tories will even harm their own people, in their rush to take money and power from anybody else and hoard it for themselves.
George Osborne has fended off Conservative MPs anxious at proposed cuts to tax credits at a private meeting of party’s 1922 backbench committee, by insisting the changes have to go ahead and warning that if he had not acted then £15bn worth of spending cuts would have to be found elsewhere.
In a Treasury analysis released to coincide with the backbenchers’ meeting, the government said if it had not acted, spending on tax credits would have risen to £40bn by 2016-17, a £10bn rise from 2010-11 and £15bn lower than now forecast as a result of the cuts being introduced by Osborne in the summer budget.
Source: Osborne refuses to back down on cuts to tax credits | Politics | The Guardian
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Tweeted @melissacade68
Don’t forget that lots of Self-Employed people and their small businesses also have the lifeline of Tax Credits and cannot always pay themselves Living or even minimal wages in order to keep going! The Tories make no mention of them, let us REMIND THE TORIES that small business and self-employed are also going to be badly affected!
It’s the same with housing benefit – if we had regulations regarding rent increases there would be no need for the bedroom tax. This government loves to treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
Osborne and the public have allowed many sick and disabled to die through welfare reform without batting an eyelid and has got away with it then Osborne could quite well get away with the tax credit cut
Did those that are affected by the tax credit cut at the last election vote Tory ? yes i believe they did in the main
have those that are affected by the tax credit cut been shouting out about the deaths of the sick and disabled ? i believe they have not
And it might be on that basis that Osborne will stick to his guns as he will know full well they have not supported the sick and disabled and the country by and large feels they should be punished
the bottom line is the public overall the small majority don’t like welfare in any form and Osborne knows that and he will have to calculate that majority and how big or small it is
my belief is Osborne will stick to the tax credit cut and any row that comes from it will blow over as that is what has happened to the sick and disabled in going through welfare reform in where a lot of screaming goes on and then just fades away leaving just the likes of you and me mike to pick up the pieces and carry on with the public as blind as ever as to what is actually going on in this country
I don’t think people affected by the tax credit cut did vote Tory, in the main, as you say.
Remember, only 24 per cent of the voting population supported the Conservative Party in May.
That’s about 11.33 million. Currently we have around 31 million in employment. Not all of the 11.33 million will be in employment (we know Tories work hard to keep the pensioner vote) so that leaves more than 20 million working people who did not vote Tory.
The problem was that many millions did not vote at all in the last election, believing that none of the other parties were offering a worthwhile alternative.
The lady on Question Time voted Tory and she is on tax credits.
Yes. What’s your point?
The Tory MPs even turned on Thatcher when they thought she might get them voted out. If Cameron ends up putting a continued Tory government at risk, his MPs will sling him out to protect the Party as a whole.
He’s not only doomed his own bunch, he’s doomed the entire population of the country too!
Sadly the next election is not just around the corner. Osborne and the tories know they have 4 more years and more budgets to ameliorate, Will sufficient numbers of the electorate remember?
They are not eyes, they are credit card scanners !!
“Those employers who are unable to provide such security to their workforce (perhaps because their finances won’t be able to cover the cost) should be provided with information, advice and support to ensure that they grow into a position where they can raise wages.”
And sanctioned, (from the directors wages & shareholders dividends), if they fail in growing into a position where they can raise wages…