Voters seem unconcerned by Britain’s chronic record of underinvestment: by 53% to 16%, voters agree that “the government should spend more on health care and pensions, even if that means spending less on infrastructure and science”
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskby Ipsos before Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget on September 23rd tested Britons’ attitudes towards growth by asking them which of a pair of contradictory statements more closely matched their view . Some 49% of voters agree with the simple proposition that economic growth “does more good than harm”, against 17% who reckon the opposite is true.
So far, so fairly good. But growth means trade-offs, and Britons are chary of accepting them. Ms Truss has made boosting trend growth to 2.5% her mission. But by 38% to 28%, respondents agreed that “politicians focus too much on economic growth at the expense of other issues”. Ms Truss reckons there is a trade-off between growth and redistribution. Nearly half the gains of the income- and payroll-tax cuts announced in Mr Kwarteng’s budget will accrue to the top 5% of households, according to the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank. That is not a particularly popular strategy: by a margin of 39% to 35% voters agree with the proposition that “redistributing money between people is more important than growing the economy overall.
Our polling reinforces other studies. In 2019 Onward, a think-tank, detected among Britons “strong hostility to the key drivers of prosperity in the modern liberal market economy: global trade, innovation and urban agglomeration”. A paper published in 2020 by Demos, another think-tank, tested the views of two large groups of voters: one younger and Remain-leaning, the other older, pro-Brexit and pro-Conservative. Both groups agreed that their towns should have more nice shops and less litter.
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