By BAGEHOT
THE House of Lords, Britain’s upper home, has simply voted to stall the federalgovernment’s prepared cuts to tax credits. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies these would have left some 3m evenworse off. As far as Downing Street is worried, this was not implied to occur. Only weeks ago assistants were breezily guaranteeing me that George Osborne would hold his ground on the steps and that he and David Cameron had an natural capability to differentiate the politically practical from the unpalatable. Now, thanks to the opposition of Liberal Democrat and Labour peers (and after numerous personal and public cautions by members of his own celebration), the chancellor needto evaluation his propositions when onceagain previously case and—at the least—spell out more completely how he will compensate those left out of pocket by them.
Members of the Conservative management are furious. They point to the convention, dating back to the 1911 Parliament Act and beyond, by which Lords do not block legislation mainly worried with public costs. They things especially to the truth that this night’s vote was brought by Lib Dem peers, of whom there are far too lotsof relative to their assistance in the nation and to their representation in the House of Commons. They likewise note that the upper home did not provide the chancellor the chance to set out a strategy (already in the works before tonight) to reduce the tax credit cuts.
Still, extra the Tories little pity. Their policy served the federalgovernment’s needlessly rigid quote to develop a big surplus by the time of the next election in2020 It was an effort to “front load” the discomfort of austerity, purchasing Downing Street space for freegifts in the run up to that vote. It was a quote to load the problem of deficit decrease onto the sorts of young, low-income individuals who do not vote and extra the old and asset-wealthy who do so in big numbers. It was asserted on the primarily phony claim that the federalgovernment is moving