Osborne defends tax credit cuts to his MPs as enemies circle

Tory MPs had a briefing meeting today with George Osborne which a number of them used to press the Chancellor about the tax credit cuts. Peter Aldous raised concerns about the changes, which which lower the threshold for withdrawing tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and speed up the rate of withdrawal as pay rises, and was supported by colleagues.

But though it was quite clear to the Chancellor that a large number of MPs from across the party – not just troublemakers – were seriously worried about the changes, he didn’t give anything away about any changes he could make. Instead, the case he made to MPs was that the Tory party was elected on the basis that it would cut £12bn from the welfare budget, and that there is no other way of reaching that target without making the changes to tax credits. He argued that the MPs present had bought into the idea that the party must make significant welfare changes, and would the party really want to start raiding the police budget, the health budget, or other pots of money for seriously vulnerable people? The party, he argued, needs to make sure that it ends up producing security for voters so that in the end what they remember is that they are better off with the changes to the living wage, childcare and so on.

It’s fair to say that it wasn’t an explosive meeting: this briefing wasn’t solely on tax credits, anyway, but on the spending review and the Chancellor was there to hear submissions from MPs. John McDonnell wandered past a couple of times with a rather tasty-looking slice of fruitcake, and Keith Vaz swept past with an entourage that included Jamie Oliver (but though Oliver initially looked rather wary at the cloud of reporters hovering outside the committee room, thinking they might be lying in wait for him rather than the Tory Chancellor, few noticed him in the large entourage enveloping Vaz), and a few Tory MPs scuttled out to joke that they’d requested a large throne from the Chancellor. Osborne himself claimed the meeting was ‘very positive’ as he left.

But away from the cloud of reporters, fruitcake-consuming Shadow Chancellors and Vaz entourages, the Chancellor’s enemies are circling, reading the row in the party as an ideal way of undermining a man whose leadership campaign has started rather dangerously early.