Credit where it's due

After the House of Lords voted to defer judgement on George Osborne's proposals to cut working tax credits and child tax credits, Nos. 10 and 11 were furious, especially as Osborne's burgeoning reputation as the next leader of his party took a severe knock.  Lord Strathclyde, now tasked with 'reining in' the Lords, said the upper chamber had acted deplorably - another example of muddled thinking at the top of the government in that this meant he also condemned the millionaire lords and ladies of new and old money who voted to hit the working poor hard, all to save face for the government; you may say that then Strathclyde was right but that's more than deplorable - it's despicable.
It all stems from the Tories pledge to cut 'welfare' by plucking £12bn out of the air, confident that post-election they would be in coalition again with the Liberal Democrats and, in negotiations, lower that figure drastically.  It was an election pledge to cut £12bn from welfare (cuts to welfare being always popular until individual measures are spelled out) and it was another election pledge to ring-fence pensions from being eaten into.  So the only way was to cut tax credits - the raising of the minimum wage to a living wage not fully compensating for the loss of income for those on the lower rungs of earnings, with such people losing to the tax man 93p in the pound for any overtime they did - even though this was not in the manifesto and Cameron had ruled it out in a leaders' debate.  The Tory leader of the Lords said that everyone assumed that tax credits would be cut after the election as if the nation were supposed to read the minds of Cameron and Osborne (they would have drawn a blank as £12bn was never meant to be cut).
Yet the Lords, in postponing the government's plans, have not acted unconstitutionally.  They were not voting on a finance bill, they were voting on secondary legislation and by that very definition it was not of primary importance (of course, it was but Osborne was trying to inveigle it on to the statute books with the minimum of debate).  Further, the Lords were not voting on something connected directly to the nation's finances, they were voting on a welfare measure with a financial component - a component that was non-essential (in that other aspects could have been taken e.g. pensions, hypothetically) except to Osborne's political fortunes.  Had it been in a finance bill, it is inconceivable that the Lords would have voted to stop it in its tracks but Osborne's chicanery once more came off the rails (as it did in the failed attempt to remove the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow).  Finally, it was not in the manifesto.  Again, had it been in the manifesto, I am confident the measure would have been passed. 
The Little Napoleons of the Treasury have egg all over their faces and it is richly deserved.  They, more than anyone else, loathe having their authority checked and challenged.  Typically mean-spirited, much of this country's decline in the past century can be traced to those and their predecessors who frequent the Treasury corridors of Whitehall.  Maybe their own salaries should all be slashed to the living wage and see how they cope (it is to cut the deficit, honest!).  Over 100 years ago, they had obstructed Lloyd George's 'People's Budget', that tried to help the ordinary people; this time, they were on the side of protecting hard-working people, poor through no fault of their own.  It should be fully elected but the world isn't perfect.  It is not the House of Lords that has acted deplorably but the bulk of the Conservative Party in the Houses of Parliament.