SIR – If you wanted clarification of the divisiveness of the Conservative Party, you only needed to be watching Chancellor Osborne’s conference speech on Monday and the response to it.

Looking ahead, in the event of the Tories winning power in 2015, he detailed huge cuts in real terms of benefits which will mainly affect the least well-off and his words were met by the party faithful (according to one newspaper) with “rapturous applause.”

Of course, pensioners will be spared, because Mr Osborne knows which voters, he hopes will help put him back into No. 11 Downing Street.

But even those in low-paid jobs, five million of them apparently, trying desperately to use work as a way out of poverty (that Mr Osbourne claims to approve of) will find their tax credit top-ups declining in value.

So, in a very rich country, which is already one of the most unequal, Mr Osborne, instead of going after tax dodgers depriving the treasury of £billions and asking for higher tax contributions from the most well-off who have got even richer over the last few years, prefers to further impoverish the poorest and weakest in our society.

David Hornsby, West View Avenue, Wrose