Conservative party

George Osborne and John McDonnell went head-to-head at Treasury Questions today and one topic predictably dominated: tax credits. There was a charged atmosphere in the Commons as the shadow chancellor explained ‘the Chancellor has a choice before him’ and outlined his proposal for reversing the planned cuts to tax credits. The plan differs somewhat from Osborne’s: ‘He can push on with the tax giveaways to multinational corporations. He can press on with tax cuts to the wealthiest few in inheritance tax that he announced in his summer budgets. Or he can reverse those tax breaks for the few and instead go for a less excessive surplus target in 2019-20 and be in

There has been an interesting response in the Tory party to Heidi Allen’s speech in which she criticised the tax credit changes. Many MPs are themselves worried about the changes, and didn’t disagree with what she had to say. But what has really riled them is the way in which she appeared to dismiss the Chamber as largely pointless – and that she spoke against the cuts having supported them once and then went onto vote with the government again on the motion before the House last night (though to be fair, she explained that she wouldn’t vote for the Opposition Day motion because she disagreed with its wording). One

‘I’ve been trying flipping hard to avoid doing it,’ said Heidi Allen today as she started her maiden speech. She hadn’t seen the point of speeches in the Chamber, she explained, because most people in the Commons were already wedded to their side, and there wasn’t much point in her adding to those speeches as they changed no minds. But the reason she had decided to give it during the Opposition Day debate on tax credits ‘because today I can sit on my hands no longer’. She wanted to criticise the tax credit cuts. She wanted to intervene before it was ‘too late’ to stop the changes to tax credits,

Tory MPs had a briefing meeting today with George Osborne which a number of them used to press the Chancellor about the tax credit cuts. Peter Aldous raised concerns about the changes, which which lower the threshold for withdrawing tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and speed up the rate of withdrawal as pay rises, and was supported by colleagues. But though it was quite clear to the Chancellor that a large number of MPs from across the party – not just troublemakers – were seriously worried about the changes, he didn’t give anything away about any changes he could make. Instead, the case he made to MPs was that

For all the leadership positioning, one of the striking things about Tory conference in Manchester was the level of agreement about what the party’s strategy should be. There was almost no one calling for the party to move right. Instead, the emphasis was on how the party could expand its electoral coalition. Boris Johnson and George Osborne may have very different styles, but the argument of their speeches was essentially the same: the Tories have to show that they are the party for low paid workers. This determination to look for new converts, which was the defining feature of David Cameron’s speech too, is a product of the election campaign.

The Tories had a good few days in Manchester. But one Tory had a particularly good week, Boris Johnson. A week ago, Boris looked becalmed. As we said in the Spectator, he was struggling to make the transition from being Mayor of London to being both the Mayor and an MP. But this week, he has delivered the best speech of his political life, shown new Tory MPs his talents, and renewed his relationship with Tory activists. It was telling that when Cameron paid tribute to Boris during the leader’s speech, the hall gave him a standing ovation. Now, the tricky thing for Boris will be coming up with a