Arrogant Tories thwarted by House of Lords
Just how much more hypocritical can this Tory government get - do they have no shame?
During the Coalition Government, Nick Clegg as both Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minister was tasked with the responsibility of reforming the House of Lords, having been told that he would receive the backing of their Conservative partners in government (as well as support from Labour). But when it came to it, the Conservatives put up a wall of resistence to change, thus stabbing their coalition partners in the back, just as they did with the Alternative Vote (AV) campaign. Labour clearly had their own agenda all along, though goodness knows what it was.
Wind forward to the last General Election campaign, when the Conservatives through the Prime Minister, David Cameron, stated they would not reduce benefits such as Tax Credits. At no point in their election manifesto did they say that they were going to drastically reduce or indeed, terminate Tax Credits, but this is now clearly what they want to do and have wanted to do all along, to the financial detriment of millions of low-earning families. This is an excellent example of what the LibDems were able to prevent the Tories from doing whilst they were in coalition governement.
Wind back - The Tories baulked at House of Lords reform, but now that the House of Lords has bared its teeth on this matter, which it viewed as being a welfare matter rather than any other, and therefore felt justified in doing so, thus defeating the Government's Tax Credit Bill, the Government now wishes to introduce knee-jerk reforms to the way the House of Lords operates.
The Tories got it wrong on House of Lords reform in the first place, and they got it wrong on Tax Credits in the second. But in their arrogance, everybody else is wrong and they will find a way around this.
As I have previously stated, "You think the last five years have been tough, you ain't seen 'nuffin' yet!" Remember the old song, "It's the rich what gets the pleasure, it's the poor what gets the blame", and so the poorly off pay for the tax-breaks of the rich.
Although most of us would like to see the House of Lords reformed, I say this; "Thank goodness we do have the House of Lords, even in its current guise, for without it, an awful lot of not well-off people would be looking forward to being even more poorly off, literally over night".