Jeremy Corbyn had David Cameron on the ropes over tax credit cuts at last week’s PMQs, but allowed him to wriggle free when he switched subjects to the steel crisis. Today, the Labour leader avoided this error, devoting all six of his questions to one issue for the first time.
Following the government’s defeat in the House of Lords, Corbyn challenged Cameron to guarantee that nobody would be worse off next April as a result of the tax credit cuts. Rather than confirming or denying that this was the case, the PM simply told him: “We will set out our new proposals in the Autumn Statement [on 25 November] and he’ll be able to study them then”. Unappeased, Corbyn went into Paxman-mode, repeating his question three times. Cameron gave no ground but the Labour leader, with greater succinctness than before (the Speaker having complained about the length of his questions), successfully exposed his discomfort. The PM had a decent quip about “a new alliance” of “the unelected and the unelectable” but it was Corbyn’s response that may lead the news tonight: “This is not a constitutional crisis, this is a crisis for three million families in this country.”
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