George Osborne has reached the point where his cuts can no longer be denied or defended | Aditya Chakrabortty

The chancellor's maths are finally outrunning his politics. If he doesn't U-turn he'll have to keep hitting striving families again and again

Over the past five years the biggest question in British politics has been this: how might George Osborne's cuts be stopped? In a decade that will be defined by austerity, this remains the problem that underpins all the others in our politics. Suddenly, we've been given a possible answer.

Many lessons can be drawn from the debacle over cuts to tax credits, and the remarkable past fortnight - in which the Sun took up arms against the party it helped create, in which a desperate mother shouted "shame on you" at the Tory she'd voted into government, and the habitually sedated House of Lords stumbled into rebellion.

Related: Now austerity is hitting strivers, how will the Tories sell it? | Suzanne Moore

Over the next five years, austerity will produce many more episodes like the war over tax credits

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