Dr Patrick English is the Director of Political Analytics at YouGov.
Today’s Budget will be Labour’s first since 2010, and the Conservatives’ first time responding to, rather than delivering, a government financial plan since Alastair Darling’s final economic statement.
Much of the content of the Budget has, in the usual way, already been trailed, with policies such as the scrapping of the £2 bus fare cap, £40bn cuts to public spending, a rise in employer’s national insurance contributions, a (continuation of the) freeze to income tax thresholds, rises to the minimum wage, reductions in access to the pensioners winter fuel allowance, and introduction of VAT on private school fees, and a change in the fiscal rules to unlock billions in government capital expenditure, each already hitting headlines.
The job of Jeremy Hunt, and the Conservative Party more widely, is of course to criticise the Budget and offer alternatives.
But their mission in doing may not be so simple if Labour are successfully able to land their communications strategy around the Budget’s purpose and motivations.
The Conservatives have already laid out extensive criticism of the planned cuts to winter fuel allowance, and adding VAT to private school fees. Both criticisms are easy for them to make – pensioners are (still) much more likely to vote Conservative than Labour, and promoting aspiration and the place of the private sector in the provision of public services are typical conservative positions.
According to YouGov data, the Conservatives have some sympathy from the public on the first, but little on the second. And this tension summarises nicely the unevenness of the path the Tories find themselves on.
Arguing against tax rises ought to be easy and very natural for the party to do. But Labour will be pitching this Budget, and specifically some of the “tougher” decisions within it, squarely as a means to increase the amount of spending available for public services.
And in that sense, they will enjoy the firm support of the British public.
The public strongly believe that services are in a bad state (74%) rather than a good one (6%), and would support the government raising taxes on wealth individuals and businesses to pay for more money to go into public services. And, in another tricky position for the Conservatives, the public also believe that public spending increases ought to take priority over tax cuts by 57% to 27%.
Brits are also well on board with the idea of increased spending for the NHS specifically, even to the extent that they would be happy to see their own taxes increased in order to achieve this.
They also tend to believe that large infrastructure projects, such as HS2, ought to be funded and completed.
If Labour do successfully construct a narrative around the Budget as one designed to balance public finances, deliver on infrastructure, and improve public services, the Conservatives will have to be careful in how they frame their criticisms of it.
Arguing against increasing spending for public services, against unlocking new spending for infrastructure investment, and against things like increasing the minimum wage would not put the Conservatives in favourable standing within the court of public opinion.
Furthermore, some policies will be a direct continuation, or reapplications, of those enacted by Conservative governments – freezing income tax bands and raising the minimum wage, as examples.
And it will be difficult for Hunt and the Conservatives to rail against public spending cuts, having themselves made such pledges pre-election, and a good deal of the conservation in their current leadership contest being about shrinking the size of the state.
Finally, Brits are quite clear who they blame for the current state of public finances, with only one-in-nine thinking the Conservatives left the country in a good economic state for Labour to inherit, versus three-in-five who think the Tories left Labour with a bad economic situation to manage.
This leaves little realistic room, in terms of what the public think at least, for the Conservatives to argue against Labour’s insistence that they are required to clean up a mess of Tory making.
All of which leaves Jeremy Hunt and the Conservatives at large on a sticky wicket. They must negotiate their first big set piece in opposition for fourteen years with barbed wire fences down each possible path, and not from any real position of strength.
The post Patrick English: The Conservatives must negotiate a tricky path in their Budget response appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Dr Patrick English
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