George Osborne has yet to master body language.

If the Chancellor is pleased with himself, the world will know about it. When he is content, self-satisfaction shines from every pore and drips from every vowel.

Judging by his performance at the Tories' Birmingham conference on Monday, Mr Osborne is a happy bunny. Lord Ashcroft's polls might say, eight months early, that a Labour government is on the way. Eurosceptics might be surrendering to the sticky embrace of Nigel Farage. Debt and deficit figures might have made a mockery of the Chancellor's every promise. He behaves, instead, as though happy days are here again.

For ten million households, this isn't exactly the case. Mr Osborne has promised to come knocking, yet again, to collect their contribution to the latest version of an economic plan that has failed for four straight years. He wants £3 billion annually from an eventual £12bn in a "deficit-reduction" strategy amounting to £25bn, or so he reckons.

Mr Osborne says there is no alternative. Tax increases, he decrees, involve an option that "no longer exists". Logic might suggest that if tax cuts for high earners can be achieved, tax rises are also possible. If the heirs of those with big pension pots can be given a break, surely nothing hinders a willing Chancellor from reversing the flow. For Mr Osborne, such talk would only spoil the mood.

In his world, two propositions cannot be doubted. One is the need for austerity, even when austerity renders impossible the kind of growth that would make austerity unnecessary. The other conviction is that only one kind of austerity can be tolerated. Only the Osborne Plan will do, despite four years of evidence to the contrary.

Fully 90 per cent of the Chancellor's "savings" have come from cuts in spending. In years past, driven by quaint ideas of what's fair, governments - even Tory governments - have preferred to believe that increased taxation counts for something, at least 50 per cent of the total, if you claim with a straight face that "we're all in it together". Not Mr Osborne.

Why does he need to find £25bn? In Birmingham, yet again, he was boasting of economic growth on his watch. He was telling us, too, of all the jobs created recently under his stewardship. It sounded like one of those virtuous circles.

If Mr Osborne was right, prosperity, economic stability and sound government finances should now be facts of life.

But the jobs don't pay. So deep has Britain sunk into the nether world of low wages, tax receipts are miserable. Despite all his previous assurances, Mr Osborne has had to go on borrowing hand over fist. Five million households embrace working families whose earnings are so lousy they need help from the benefits system just to get by. The Chancellor could address the obscene fact of state subsidy and exploited labour. Instead, with a boast and a smile, he goes after those most in need.

All the fast, loose Tory talk of scroungers is forgotten. This is bedrock. These are working families who have been told, time and again, that work is its own reward, that any job will do, that the poverty trap is being dismantled. They have done their best. For a reward, Mr Osborne means to freeze their benefits for two years. Even the previous, miserly 1 per cent indexation is discarded. "On average", in the meaningless phrase, it amounts to the loss of £300 a year. For many, the loss will be much greater.

The Chancellor has had nothing to say about the children who will be thrown into poverty by his proposals. He has not discussed the certainty that food banks, already hard-pressed, will be overwhelmed if his party is returned to power. The concept of national shame has played no part in his argument. Less than a week after Scotland voted, all the claptrap about social solidarity flowing from the Union, its "strength and security", is discarded without a backward glance.

This is class war, simple but far from pure. Anyone who clung to happy thoughts on "classlessness" from the likes of John Major, Tony Blair and those who clapped hands and believed in fairy tales knows better now. Mr Osborne has even dropped the old Tory pretence that there is some sort of moral distinction to be made between the deserving and undeserving poor. The Chancellor has no interest in need, justice, or common obligations. Why should his kind pay for that kind?

Those who regard politics as a game of tactics and strategy will ponder long over Mr Osborne's plans. Is he "shoring up the core Tory vote", then? Does he calculate that no party can go wrong if it disdains "welfare"? Is this a cunning scheme to put Labour on the spot, now that the Eds, Miliband and Balls, have stopped arguing over the need for austerity and accepted - to the last penny - his last benefits spending cap but one?

Still, ten million households ought to represent a lot of potential voters. You might conclude, then, that Mr Osborne has pored over the polling from marginal seats and among the Ukip-inclined.

You might guess David Cameron's election strategist has made a decision. Something like this: "Here are ten million households, men, women and children, about whom we need not give a toss.

We can 'level' with the rest by telling them that their money is subsidising losers." A pay rise or a welfare bill: such is the Chancellor's deeply dishonest pitch.

Once upon a time, the Tory Party contained people who recoiled from this sort of thing. It didn't help much, but lip service to one-nation Conservatism had a few articulate advocates. If any such rebellion was in the Birmingham air, the noise didn't carry far. Even the idea that it would be economically disastrous to suppress the working poor in the Osborne manner has found no takers. Instead, the wildly popular fantasy is simple: if there is less money to go around, thanks to this Chancellor, why let it go around at all?

Judging by his manner in interviews, Mr Osborne has awarded himself a wee star for a job well done. He appears to think Labour will have no answer to his latest gambit. Going by what we heard from that party's conference, with its promises to curtail child benefit and the pensioners' winter fuel allowance, you can hardly fault the Chancellor for naked cunning.

Any regrets among two million Scottish referendum No voters will have to keep. Mr Osborne reckons they deserve a few tax cuts of their own, for solace. His advice to those Scots who don't earn enough to pay tax has yet to appear on the public record. If he has his way they will be as desperate and as miserable as their peers anywhere in these islands.

Grant Mr Osborne this much: he has put several of his cards on the table. He has another £9bn of cuts up his sleeve, but his grin tells all. If you don't like him and all his works, he doesn't care. He thinks he has a British majority on his side.