Britain: Cameron and Osborne embarrassed as Establishment splits over tax credit cuts

The Tory plans to cut tax credits have been seriously delayed thanks to last night’s vote in the House of Lords, demonstrating how much Corbyn’s leadership victory has changed the dynamic in Parliament - only months after the jubilant and complacent Tories won the general election.

Although this doesn’t mean the end of the tax credit cuts, dubbed a “Work Penalty” by Labour, a slender majority in the House of Lords have put off the implementation of the plans until certain conditions are met by the government, including full “transitional protection” for those affected for the next three years.

Cameron, Osborne, and co. have been dealt a series of heavy blows over this issue, which threatens to push thousands of families into poverty. Leading the charge against the Tories has been Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell from the Labour frontbench. This embarrassing defeat for the government is, in no small part, thanks to the strong, anti-austerity voice coming from Corbyn and his supporters.

A (probably now former) Tory voter on Question Time was reduced to tears recently as she described the impact the cuts would have on her family. “Shame on you” she told Amber Rudd, the Tory on the panel, who could not muster a response. Even Tory MPs have spoken out against the tax credit cuts, including in parliamentary debates on the subject. Some commentators are likening the cuts to Thatcher’s poll tax.

For Osborne, the defeat in the Lords is extremely embarrassing, making it difficult for him to reach his targets on public sector cuts. He is now throwing his toys out of the pram and shouting about “constitutional issues” as a result of the Lords blocking a policy passed in the House of Commons.

Whilst Marxists agree entirely that the bloated and unelected House of Lords should be abolished entirely - along with the monarchy - as remnants of the feudal era, it is also worth pointing out that Cameron and Osborne hardly have any democratic legitimacy themselves for what they’re doing to those who rely on tax credits.

After winning the general election with just 24% of the electorate, the Tories claimed they had a mandate to implement their austerity manifesto. What is notable is that, not only were the cuts to tax credits not in the manifesto, but Cameron explicitly denied that the Tories would cut tax credits several times during the election campaign. Faced with the facts, Osborne’s attempts to claim the democratic high ground against the Lords are laughable.

This issue of tax credits has brought to the surface the contradictions faced by the ruling class today. On the one hand the economic crisis is far from over; to save capitalism, extreme cuts are necessary. But, on the other hand, the scale of the cuts required are having social consequences, which are manifesting themselves in mass movements that threaten the system as a whole.

It is this irreconcilable antagonism between the needs of the capitalist system and the needs of society that is causing different representatives of the Establishment to come down on different sides of the argument - hence the split between the Lords and the Tory government. The ruling class cannot agree amongst themselves how to deal with the crisis, as the only solution on a capitalist basis is one that lights the fire of radicalisation amongst the masses and provokes workers, the poor, and the youth into action.

Corbyn and the other leaders of the labour movement need to make the most of these divisions to isolate and defeat the Tories, all the while systematically exposing capitalism as the root cause of the problem. The fight over tax credits demonstrates just how weak the Tories really are, despite their election win in May.

A strong Labour Party with clear socialist ideas could bring this government down in the very near future. Our task is to fight for that and build the Corbyn revolution.