The Tories have a new nemesis – angry, betrayed voters like Michelle Dorrell

Will incidents like Ms Dorrell's tearful Question Time appearance convince George Osborne tax credit cuts are a disaster?

Tory voters, such as Michelle Dorrell, who fear the affect of tax credit cuts on the their families, are a great threat to George Osborne and his party (BBC)

Sharron Storer, Maria Hutchings, Gillian Duffy. To this list of women who have shamed politicians with their uncomfortable accounts of the real world we can now add Michelle Dorrell, the working mother and Conservative voter who broke down in tears on Question Time as she told Amber Rudd, the Climate Change Secretary, how the cuts to tax credits would leave her struggling to pay her rent and provide for her four children.

As Ms Dorrell pointed out, the Prime Minister had promised during the election campaign that he didn’t “want to” cut tax credits, and she had trusted the Conservatives to keep to their word by giving them the most valuable thing she has – her vote. Her tears on Thursday were hot with anger and betrayal, and it is no wonder.

As I wrote last month, the tax credit cuts threaten to be George Osborne’s 10p tax. The parallels with that fiasco by Gordon Brown are striking: a strategy-obsessed and too-clever-by-half Chancellor makes a spectacular error by penalising – by no small amount – the voters who decide elections. These are the “hard-working people” whom that glib electoral slogan was designed to attract, and yet, just as the phrase itself glosses over the reality of their low-paid, hard-fought lives, so politicians, once in office, glide over the problems of this slice of the electorate. Public confrontations like Ms Dorrell’s rarely happen outside of general election campaigns because, once the election is won, politicians believe they don’t need to come face to face with voters until next time.

These voters, the C2-bracketed, blue-collar Tories, backed Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s until they were betrayed by the poll tax, then supported Tony Blair in the 1990s and 2000s until the 10p tax rate was abolished. Osborne will be aware of those two disastrous policies, but does he recognise he has created a third? Even with the Labour Party in its current troubled state under Jeremy Corbyn, what will these voters who feel betrayed by tax credits do in 2020, particularly if, like Brown, the Chancellor has become prime minister?

It is probable, despite the insistence to the contrary of several ministers at the Conservative conference earlier this month, that Osborne will do something to soften the blow. But, I believe, it has to be more than just altering the timing of the letters that go out to families detailing how much they will lose from next April, as has been suggested, as if this is suddenly going to turn Osborne from the Grinch who stole Christmas into Santa Claus. The proposal by Frank Field to protect the tax credits of those on £13,100 a year and under, which the Labour MP says will not cost the state any more money because it would mean taking away more in tax credits from higher earners, is one option that would save the Chancellor from a U-turn on the overall scale of welfare cuts.

The story of Osborne’s week should have been his tactical victory over his opposite number John McDonnell’s “embarrassing” U-turn over Labour’s support for the fiscal charter. When the opposition is in such chaos, it must be easy to feel triumphant. But there is an opposition out there far deadlier than the Labour Party and even the swaggering SNP: it is voters like Michelle Dorrell.

Low expectations

It is illegal to discriminate against a pregnant woman in the workplace and yet, according to an estimate by the Department for Business and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), this year 54,000 women were dismissed or forced out of their jobs for being pregnant, which represents one in nine expectant or new mothers in the workforce, and a figure that has nearly doubled from 30,000 in 2005.

The research also found that 100,000 pregnant women and new mothers experience harassment or negative comments at work each year, while 50,000 pregnant women are discouraged from attending their antenatal appointments by their employers. The charity Maternity Action, under its new chairman Jo Swinson, the former Liberal Democrat business minister, has launched a campaign called #MothersWork which will press the Government to do more to help women discriminated against for having a child, including urging ministers to put extra funding into an advice service and axing fees of £1,200 for pregnant women and new mothers who want to take their employer to an employment tribunal.

The decision to return to a job after having a child is down to individual choice, but the workplace shouldn’t be a hostile environment for new mothers.

A privilege MPs actually deserve

The ruling by judges last week that the Wilson Doctrine – which is supposed to prevent MPs and peers from being spied upon by our intelligence agencies – is not enforceable in law is deeply troubling. Those who applaud the decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal say that MPs should not be afforded special privileges that aren’t extended to us voters.

Yet the Wilson Doctrine, named after Harold Wilson’s pledge in 1966 that parliamentarians’ phones would not be tapped, is not the same as MPs getting a decent expense account. It is about protecting both the private, free-flowing contact between an MP and constituent and the separation of powers between the executive and parliament. An MP on the opposition benches may have an ideology so far removed from that of the prime minister of the day, yet that MP, democratically elected, has a right to hold those views without fear of being spied upon – and there has always been an exemption for national emergencies.

Cameras at the ready

A different kind of snooping is about to happen in the Palace of Westminster: approval has just been granted by the House of Lords for a follow-up to Michael Cockerell’s acclaimed BBC series Inside the Commons.

The Lord Speaker, Baroness D’Souza, has confirmed to peers that the documentary can go ahead in principle – meaning TV cameras could be in place within months. Given the recurring pressure for reform of the House of Lords, will this series make the case for change or celebrate the status quo?

@janemerrick23