Sassenach wrote:It remains to be seen how badly the tax credit thing will damage the Tories. I've seen some rough figures which suggest that most recipients are Labour voters anyway (with the usual caveats that you can't especially trust this kind of polling data).
Yes, but if a significant number are 2015 Tory voters who become vocal about this, such as the lady on TV last week, that is where an effect may come in.
It also seems to be the case that cutting the welfare budget is actually quite popular. From a purely anecdotal standpoint I can tell you that almost every conversation about the subject that I've had has been with people who are quite stridently anti-welfare. Keep in mind that I live in Sheffield and I'm just about the only Tory voter I know.
Well yes, we all support cuts in welfare to people we think don't deserve to get the benefits. And we can all see cases (which may be extremes rather than typical exemplars) of such unworthiness to help back up that view.
But of course, those same people would not be anti-welfare if they had to rely on it themselves, and in the case of Tax Credits, or other provisions, may not actually recognise it as welfare until it is cut. People on benefits even often support cuts assuming that it doesn't mean to the "deserving". Systems are not clever enough to tell the difference, often.
Another common attitude that I've found among the traditional working classes is a belief that you shouldn't have children if you can't afford them. It's a much more hard-headed attitude than you tend to see reflected in the media.
In reality those people probably don't realise that if their parents had taken that attitude they would not be here. Hard-headed is indeed a way to describe it. And of course what about people who were able to afford kids when they had them, but later on had a change to their circumstances (lost job, seperation/divorce, deteriorating health, having a disabled kid)?
My suspicion is that Osborne can ride out the storm from cutting the tax credits budget quite easily. Far more damaging to the Tories will be the dispute over the junior doctors contract, but they'll inevitably cave in over that in the end so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
The BMA may well cave in, but if the junior doctors vote with their feet it won't go away as an issue. Especially with other NHS issues like a growing set of deficits and being overstretched at wintertime.
He may be able to ride it out. Or it may become like the 10p tax rate thing under Brown, a symbol of a government hitting poor people through a hamfisted tinkering with taxes. I wonder how many Labour voters defected to the Tories over that, and are now waiting to see what the letters say before Xmas.
The measure of this is also in what happens between the Lords and Commons over it - and whether Osborne comes up with a hot fix to it in the Autumn Statement.