Release the hounds! It won’t just be foxes who will be ripped to shreds by the Tories - and Labour need to be braver and more cunning

I’ll give it to George Osborne: he pulled off a masterstroke Budget.

Outflanking Labour with the promise of a £9-per-hour minimum wage – which he dishonestly relabelled the “living wage” despite falling well short – was a brilliant final act of duplicity.

He got to pose as Generous George and ensure that complaints from the Opposition that he actually left millions of families worse off by axing in-work tax credits will largely fall on deaf ears.

Yet, despite what might be said by a crowing Tory press, who would have murdered Ed Miliband had he dared to go beyond his meek offer of £8-an-hour, the Budget was a classic Tory ploy to punish the poorest and reward the richest.

In short, it was a message to those who do not traditionally vote for the Tally Ho tribe that told them: “We won, you lost and now we’re going to set the dogs on you.”

Working class families, poor students, and pubic sector workers all face having their incomes torn to shreds by the Budget cuts.

And to add further folly to their foul-mindedness, the Tories also want to release the hounds on another traditional enemy: foxes.

They once again face being freely chased down and ripped to bits by a frenzied pack of dogs after MPs vote next week on whether to relax Labour’s ban.

But, with the help of a few Tories who rightly think such bloodlust is stomach churning and inexplicable in 21st century Britain, turning the clock back to a time of unabashed animal cruelty could still be stopped.

Yet the same cannot be said of Osborne’s Budget in which he reneged on a pre-election vow not to reduce tax credits.

Due to the cut in vital income support, millions of the most vulnerable Britons, especially families, will see a pay cut, despite a welcome rise for the minimum wage to £7.20 in 2016.

Even those currently earning more than the £9 “living wage” Osborne has promised by 2020 will lose out.

The Resolution Foundation gave the example of a two-child family with two adults earning £9.35 an hour will be £850-a-year worse off.

Because tax credits were factored in to the cost-of-living calculation of the actual living wage, without them it would have to rise from £9.15 in London and £7.85 elsewhere to £12 an hour across Britain after the cuts, according to the think tank.

At the same time, poor families will now be discouraged from growing after child tax credit was limited to two children.

How Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who claims to be a devout Catholic, could brazenly cheer such a move demonstrates that his faith lies more in free market fundamentalism than the Gospel’s message of social justice with Jesus’s blessing of the poor, frequent criticism of the rich and calls for a more sharing world.

And, in a bizarre penalty to entrepreneurship, self-employed people on low incomes, such as bricklayers and tree surgeons, will lose even more because they won’t see their incomes rise while tax credits are cut.

Meanwhile, maintenance grants for the poorest students are to be replaced by ramped-up loans.

Furthermore, 5.3million public sector workers – people who teach our children, care for our sick parents, clean our streets and keep us safe – will see their pay capped at 1% for the next four years.

This means their salaries will continue to fall in real terms after having already suffered six years of wage cuts, pay freezes and pension raids.

Yet, for those who do tend to vote for the Tories, their support was richly rewarded.

Osborne, a millionaire Trust Fund beneficiary, slashed inheritance tax for just 26,000 wealthy estates, helped 130,000 so-called middle earners by raising the 40p income tax threshold to £43,000, cut corporation tax from 20% to 18% (8% lower than the nearest G7 competitor) and replaced the bank levy with a more generous 8% profit surcharge.

You couldn’t make it up.

And yet, as I said at the beginning, it was a political masterstroke because it leaves Labour, who had many policies cherry-picked by the Chancellor, hamstrung for fear of looking like they’re defending a “bloated” benefit system, supporting lower wages and care only about the frequently derided public sector workers.

The Opposition’s reluctance to be bolder – and offer something truly better for working families and make our grossly unequal economy fairer – gave the Tories room for manoeuvre.

Sadly, not one of Labour’s leadership candidates looks like they have the mettle or the political nous to stand up to this master tactician of a Chancellor.

All but one seem intent on moving the party to the right by varying degrees – and falling into yet more of Osborne’s traps and being cowed into another election offer that was clearly far too meagre.

For starters, they could wrongfoot Osborne (as well as cutting fares and improving services) by vowing to renationalise the railways – a hugely popular policy that is even supported by a majority of Tory voters and yet ideologically opposed by Conservative politicians and the Establishment they serve.

And yet Jeremy Corbyn, the only Labour candidate who is prepared to offer this and other more radical polcies, simply doesn’t look credible enough as an alternative Prime Minister, doesn’t even appear to particularly want the leadership, and has neither the sense to focus his fire squarely on economic injustice nor the ability (or possibly just desire) to speak to a wider audience.

I despair.

If the other three – or at least Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper - don’t buck up their ideas and fight, Labour will go the way of the foxes while the Tories get away with doing what they want by shredding the public purse and turning what’s left into a mere corporate cashflow.