Donald Macintyre's Sketch: Whips round up George Osborne glee club as Boris Johnson gloats elsewhere

If humbled by the high Tory backbench turn-out for Treasury Questions, the Chancellor was anything but humble

Chancellor George Osborne speaking during Treasury Questions in the House of Commons

Maybe the unusually high turn-out on the Tory backbenches for Treasury Questions was a spontaneous outpouring of loyalty for George Osborne in his hour of need. It’s likelier that the government whips had been hyper-active.

Either way the Chancellor, if humbled, was anything but humble. Rather he was, at least at the beginning, a bit grumpy. “Last night, unelected Labour and Liberal peers voted down the financial measure on tax credits approved by this elected House of Commons,” he announced for openers.

Much later, the SNP’s Patrick Grady tried a wind-up: “How much would the Chancellor save for the public purse by abolishing the House of Lords?”

A smile finally flitting across his hitherto sphinx-like, if mildly defiant, features, Osborne replied: “That is a very decent proposal for the Autumn Statement…”

This was presumably a joke; but he then added: “My view is pretty clear – we should have an elected House of Lords – but of course that view has not prevailed.”

Since all this was the day’s Tory theme, it’s worth swiftly deconstructing, First the “unelected” peers who voted down his Christmas tax credit-cutting spree included crossbenchers. Secondly, this progressive new dislike of an “unelected” upper house glosses over the facts: Conservative ministers agreed to Lords reform as a coalition sop to the Liberal Democrats and then pulled it after a Tory backbench revolt.

But no matter. Valiantly as he might have tried, the Chancellor couldn’t completely avoid the tax credit cuts themselves. In his first Treasury Questions, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (it still feels really weird to write those four words – and obviously even weirder for Osborne to say them since he prefers the term “Honourable Member for Hayes and Harlington”) was in studiedly non-gloat mode, promising to “applaud” Osborne if he drops the measure. Which of course he isn’t going to do, promising only “lessening the impact on families during the transition”.

Not all Tory backbenchers were present. Heidi Allen, whose maiden speech bravely denounced the cuts last week, is presumably indefinitely detained in a secure Treasury re-education centre.

And Boris Johnson was also absent, no doubt wisely. To turn up yesterday really would have looked like gloating.