Budget Fails to Change the Dial for the Conservatives

New polling by YouGov for The Times has reinforced the sense that Jeremy Hunt’s Budget this week has failed to move the political dial in the Conservatives’ favour.

According to the poll, carried out between the 6th and 7th March, Labour now has a 27 point polling lead. When it comes to headline voting intentions for Westminster, 47% said they would vote Labour (up one point from the week before), compared to 20% saying Conservative (unchanged since the week before). The Conservatives, according to this poll, are now just 7 points ahead of Reform UK.

Delving deeper, when it comes to headline voting intentions, among all those who said they voted Conservative at the 2016 General Election, fewer than half, 48%, said they will do so now. Around a quarter (26%) said they plan to vote Reform UK.

Further polling by YouGov has also assessed the public’s attitudes to measures in the Budget. It notes that: “The most popular economic measures are freezing tax on petrol and diesel at their current level and introducing a new tax on vapes, with 73% and 72% saying each is a good idea, respectively. Britons are also in favour of increasing the threshold before losing entitlement to child benefit (64%), changing the non-dom tax rules (61%), and extending the oil and gas windfall tax (59%).

“While there isn’t majority disapproval for any of the individual polices tested, the public are least supportive of a freeze on the tax on alcohol (43% good idea, 40% wrong priority) and maintaining the planned 1% increase in public spending (36% good idea, 27% wrong priority).”

That said, overall, 32% of those question said the Budget was not fair compared to 27% saying it was. 33% said they felt the measures announced were not affordable compared to 28% saying they were.

Just 10% of respondents said the Budget will make them better off, with one in five saying it will make them worse off and 58% saying the measures announced will make no difference to them at all.

Perhaps the most difficult result for the Conservatives is that, according to YouGov, just 4% said the economy is in a good state compared to 71% who argue it is in a bad state.

Even the Government’s non-dom tax policy, viewed by many as an attempt to shoot Labour’s fox, seems to have backfired. YouGov notes: “One of the announcements in the budget was abolishing the current "non-dom" tax regime, replacing it with a new scheme that requires people coming to the UK to pay tax on their foreign income after living here for four years.

“The chancellor stated that the money saved would be used to reduce taxes and allow people to earn more money before losing child benefit. Labour had already said they planned to abolish the current "non-dom" tax regime if elected into Government, but would spend the money on NHS staff and free breakfast clubs at schools.

“Asked which of the two policies they’d prefer, the public favour the Labour policy by 52% to 21%. The Labour Party option was chosen by three-quarters (73%) of those who voted for the party at the last election, and was also marginally more popular amongst those who voted Conservative (38% to 29%).”

Meanwhile, ahead of mayoral elections in May, additional polling suggests the Conservatives’ poster child for its levelling-up agenda, the Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, is on course to lose.

The poll of voters in the Tees Valley by Censuswide for the communications agency, Yasper, puts Labour on 45%, with the Conservatives miles behind on 19%.

To put the result into context, when Tees Valley lasted voted for a Mayor in 2021, in what was admittedly a two horse race, the result saw the Conservatives win with 73% of the votes cast compared to Labour on 27%.

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