FEW sights are more repellent than pampered Tories having a tantrum about not getting their own way.

If suffering two defeats in the House of Lords over their vicious plan to axe tax credits for low-paid workers is viewed as a constitutional crisis, the blame lies with George Osborne.

The Chancellor could have put forward his vindictive proposals in a designated finance Bill, which would have been immune from interference by the upper house.

His choice, however, was to use a mechanism known as a statutory instrument because it would avoid a similar level of detailed scrutiny to that of primary legislation.

Osborne gambled, he lost and, backed by party cronies, is intent on blaming the bookie instead of his own rashness.

Little store should be set by Tory claims to be supported by constitutional experts, who are a bit like lawyers. Their professional opinions frequently dovetail with those of their clients.

Defence of the interests of the House of Commons is vested in Speaker John Bercow and he insists that there was nothing untoward in events in the Lords.

The joint committee on Conventions examined this very issue in 2006, declaring that the Lords should not “regularly reject” statutory instruments but that there are “situations in which it is consistent both with the Lords’ role in Parliament as a revising chamber and with Parliament’s role in relation to delegated legislation for the Lords to threaten to defeat an SI.”

Ignorance of this reality is no excuse for Osborne to impersonate a petulant football manager.

Truculent declarations that the unelected Lords has overruled the elected Commons would carry more weight if the Tories had shown previous interest in promoting a more democratic system.

Only when an anachronistic parliamentary institution dependent on heredity and patronage jumps up and bites them on the arse do Tories begin bleating about abolition or full election of the second house.

The Electoral Reform Society points out that pursuit of partisan advantage through “tinkering around the edges or packing the second chamber with yet more donors and ex-politicians, at a cost of over £2.6m per year” should be unthinkable.

Root-and-branch constitutional reform is overdue. Unelected legislators and an outdated voting system should be dumped.

This is not what the Tories want. David Cameron’s planned “rapid review” is intended to clip the wings of the House of Lords for refusing to join his parliamentary lynch mob as they drive three million poor people deeper into poverty.

No credit left

Tory apologists stress that Cameron and Osborne pledged before the general election that they would slash £12 billion from the welfare budget, but they gave no details about where the axe would fall.

Indeed, Cameron insisted that working tax credits and child tax credits would not be affected, meaning either that he lied to the electorate or that Osborne kept him in the dark.

Either way, the Prime Minister emerges from this debacle with no credit.

He and his party accuse their critics of having no alternative to Osborne’s bash-the-poor agenda, but this is as much a lie as Cameron’s discredited pre-election pledge.

Reversing the Chancellor’s inheritance tax breaks for the wealthy elite, lower corporation tax handout to big business and reduced top rate of income tax for those on £150,000 a year would help do the trick.

Taxation is unduly weighted in Britain toward those least able to afford it.

This has to change, but the essential first step to achieving this is keeping mass pressure on the Tory government until it is forced to face another general election.