Today's Update by The Waugh Zone Titled "DUFF JUSTICE?"

* Paul WAUGH

by Paul Waugh | Opinion

The Lords v Commons tax credits crunch looms larger. The Telegraph quotes Government sources warning that the Lords would have ‘its wings clipped’ if it went ahead on Monday and backed a fatal motion killing George Osborne’s statutory instrument.

On the Today programme, Lib Dem chief whip in the Lords Dick Newby explained just why his party was pushing this so hard, pointing out the SI was unamendable and that the Chartered Institute of Taxation ‘not a bunch of lefties’ had said the cuts would be ‘devastating’. Newby added of the PM’s PMQs veiled threat to flood the Lords with more Tory peers: “The Prime Minister is acting like a schoolboy bully, he’s been challenged and he’s threatening to bring round lots of his friends to duff us up.”

When the HuffPost was namechecked in the Lords yesterday, for our report that angry Tories were threatening retaliation if a fatal motion was passed, both Lib Dem Lord Tyler and Labour’s Baroness Smith condemned the threats.

But there are many peers who are very nervous about the constitutional crisis that could emerge. Ex Cab Sec Lord Butler told Today that the tax credits cuts were ‘a central plank’ of the Government’s welfare plan and it would be ‘quite wrong’ of the unelected Lords to block it. There was a riks of “The House of Lords getting too big for its unelected boots” he said.

The Times reports that Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner, has written to the Chancellor to call for 800,000 children under five to be protected from the cuts. Osborne himself was pretty robust at the Treasury Select yesterday, warning the Lords not to ‘second guess’ the Commons on financial matters.

He even claimed the cuts had been endorsed at the general election. But for some Tories, Osborne still has a tin ear on how he comes across and his line yesterday that he was ‘comfortable’ with his judgement call was perhaps a good example (especially coming after the PM’s ‘delighted’ remark).

On Question Time last night, Nadhim Zahawi hit out at those who claimed the Tories didn’t understand what it was like to be poor, pointing to his family living on ‘hand outs’ from friends when his dad’s business went bankrupt. Jeremy Corbyn’s new aide Andrew Fisher swiftly pointed out on Twitter that Zahawi used his MPs’ exes to heat his riding stables. 

But Zahawi was right to point out that several of the 2010 and 2015 intakes of MPs do know life at the sharp end. And Labour’ s Jess Phillips tweeted a link to her HuffPost blog in which she explained how tax credits had been a ‘hand up, not a hand out’.

* Paul Waugh is the Executive Editor, Politics, HuffPost UK.