Osborne’s clumsy stumble over tax credits

The chancellor's putting numbers ahead of people is an occupational hazard, but also a personal shortcoming.

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George Osborne: ideology more important than humanity?

It has taken a "long time for the balloon to go up", says John Rentoul in The Independent. The Budget was three months ago, yet it wasn't until recentlythat the House of Lords "finally forced a retreat on tax credits". It remains a mystery why George Osborne ever thought it was sensible to take large sums away from the working poor. As noted in the Financial Times, the cuts hit the very "strivers" the Tories promised to shield: for example, a bank clerk with two children stood to lose £2,262.

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.