George Osborne’s relish over welfare reform risks recontaminating the Tory brand

For the past few weeks Ed Miliband has repeated the words ‘bedroom tax’ ad nauseum. The average voter may think that such a thing exists. His obsession makes little sense without historic context. The last time a Labour opposition succeeded in attaching the word ‘tax’ to something which a Conservative government preferred to call something else was in 1990 when the Community Charge became almost universally known as the Poll Tax. Labour’s strategy then, depicting the Conservatives as taking sadistic pleasure in trampling upon the poor and weak, had a devastating effect.

In those days, Labour posed as the party of compassion — and portrayed the Tories as economic obsessives who would crush the poor through the blackness of their hearts. The next 13 years saw Labour forfeit any claim to stand up for the poorest. It was generous with benefits, but this simply served to condemn a generation to welfare dependency.