David Cameron proved yesterday what we have known all along. He does not have the first idea how ordinary people live their lives and worse still, he doesn’t care. His big conference speech set out the vision that his party were now the party of working people. A week later and he declares himself “delighted” that the House of Commons voted to cut tax credits to working people. Let’s make clear what has happened: Cameron has deliberately cut the incomes of the poorest workers in the land and he is “delighted” by it. What do you think would make him sad?
This is, of course, the same Cameron who said before the election he did not want to cut tax credits and confirmed he would not do so. And then he did.
You do not need to be a rocket scientist to realise that the tax credits system is a bit of a mess. They are, essentially, a benefits top up for the working poor. Tax credits were a good idea but for years they have needed to be reformed. The Tories, along with the useful idiots of the Lib Dems, did nothing apart from tinker around the edges of tax credits during their woeful period in government, cutting a bit here and there, taking away from those of us at the low to middle of the income range, but essentially leaving the poor alone. But under Cameron, there are a lot of poor people and thanks to this cut in tax credits some 200,000 people will now be thrown into real poverty. How could anyone be “delighted” by that?
I suspect those benefiting from cuts to corporation tax won’t care too much, nor those very rich people who will benefit from changes to inheritance tax. The poorest will simply get poorer.
I sense that the Tories are testing the ground with the tax credit cuts. They are wondering if they can get away with it, if the fuss will die down. They muddy the waters by pretending that changes to childcare costs and tax changes will fully mitigate the tax credit cuts, which they won’t. Get the bad news out of the way early, will be Cameron and mainly his chosen successor George Osborne’s preferred way of doing things so that by 2020 enough people will have forgotten all about it. Anyway, the poorest people don’t often live in Tory constituencies. So who cares?
Labour did its utmost to stop the cuts, but it wasn’t enough. Corbyn better mobilised his troops better than previous leaders were able to mobilise him, but the Tories won the day, but the opposition barely dented the Tory bandwagon. Cameron lost his temper again at yesterday’s PMQs. Why did speaker after Labour speaker not further wind him up when he said how “delighted” he was about making poor people poorer? What were the whips up to? Was there no one experienced enough to pick up on what he had said? Little old me, I heard it, I let out a more than perfunctory “What???” as he said it. These remain early days of Cameron’s government but they have hit the ground running. A welter of serious legislation has already passed by and much more is along the road. The priority for Labour, and the SNP for that matter who I thought were woeful during the debate, is to get a grip in the Commons. Public meetings outside of parliament are one thing, but to influence the hearts and minds of Joe and Josephine Public, the first port of call must surely be to hold the government to account in the main democratic forum.
The public needs to be reminded, over and over again, that Cameron was “delighted” at the coming cuts to tax credits which he said but a few months ago would never happen and so should Cameron himself. The Tories are not, never were and never will be the party of the workers. The good thing is that Cameron himself has now proved it.
