The front page of tomorrow’s Daily Mirror will make for uncomfortable viewing in No. 11. In the week that George Osborne cut benefits for thousands of disabled people (most notably through the bedroom tax), it shows his car parked in a disabled bay at an M4 service station.
A Treasury source has responded by stating that Osborne was dropped off outside the service station to get lunch and didn’t realise the car was illegally parked when he got back in. But the damage has likely already been done. As when Osborne was caught in a first class train carriage with only a standard ticket, it suggests a man who doesn’t think the rules apply to him (however innocent the mistake was). But the Chancellor, I suspect, will take comfort from the fact that the public remain overwhemingly supportive of the coalition’s welfare measures.