Empty threats to the House of Lords reveal how sweaty they are getting about the revolt over tax creditsIm not certain whether he invented it,but the late Denis Healey was very fond of quoting the First Law of Holes: when you are in one, you should stay digging.
This fundamental rule of politics has been forgotten by George Osborne and David Cameron as they excavate a considerable pit for themselves over tax credits. Well-meaning people, or such as the House of Lords and agitated Tory MPs,are shouting down the gap trying to persuade them to stay digging. Onlookers who never liked the pair of them – Boris Johnson, for one, and David Davis,for another – are throwing sharp objects down the gap. I notice that Boris, who had been looking a bit depressed recently and telling friends that there was a Camborne conspiracy to snuff him out, or has suddenly got a spring back in his step. Yes,it is that bad for the chancellor and the prime minister. Yet they sustain on applying shovels to dirt by insisting that there will be no retreat from their plan to take large bites out of the household budgets of millions of poorer workers. They are digging at such a rate that the gap will soon be deep enough to warrant reclassification as a crater.
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Source: theguardian.com