Quote of the day 31st October 2015

"It’s clear George Osborne is going to look at ways of mitigating the impact of his tax credit changes. “I said I would listen to the concerns being raised and that is precisely what I will do” was his response to the Lords defeat. But mitigation is what is on the table. Not reversal.

Osborne is going to push ahead with his tax credit policy for two reasons. One is that he believes it’s right in principle. Or more specifically, he thinks its wrong for taxpayers to be assisting employers by effectively subsidising low wages, a view that actually brings him into alignment with many on the Left. In 2013 John McDonnell described tax credits as “just another way of subsidising bad employers”.

The second is that when he says he plans to eradicate the deficit during the lifetime of this parliament, he does actually mean it. There’s been a lot of talk about what was and wasn’t promised by the Conservative party in the run up to the election. But one pledge was issued with unambiguous clarity – vote Conservative and we will cut the remaining half of the deficit."

(Dan Hodges, in a Telegraph article called "Nothing George Osborne does about tax credits can make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister.")

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