HE HELD on to power in last month’s general election following an economics-heavy campaign in which he promised to swipe an additional £12 billion ($19 billion) from Britain’s welfare budget. On June 22nd David Cameron, the prime minister, showed he meant business. There were no great surprises about how those cuts would be achieved in his speech at a school in Runcorn in Cheshire. Mr Cameron had already promised to protect pensioner benefits and child benefit. Other, perhaps more populist cuts—among them removing housing benefit from the under-25s and lowering the benefit cap—would raise comparatively small sums of money. That leaves benefits for those in work: tax credits and housing benefit.
