I knew the cost of living crisis had bitten deep, and that voters’ appetite for tax rises was limited, but there was one stat in our recent pre-Budget polling that jumped out nonetheless.
When asked what areas they would be willing to see their taxes increase to pay for, even pandemic preparedness failed to win a majority over.
It might be little more than three years since we saw the back of the last covid lockdown, yet people are so worried about their finances, thought I, that they can’t even spare a penny to try to avoid another Covid omnishambles.
Voters, it transpired as I delved further into the data, wouldn’t offer up any more of their hard-earned cash to doctors, pensioners, the unemployed, benefits claimants, the defence of the realm, schools or teachers either.
Only nurses, the Public First polling found, were worthy of a little bit extra from the taxpayer. It was the only option out of a menu of 11 areas of public life that won majority support.
All of which, for this believer in public investment, was a little bit depressing.
But then I remembered back to a couple of focus groups that I had run for the i newspaper during the election campaign I’m which we discussed the state of public services. Context is everything with polling.
‘They didn’t believe funding was the answer to broken Britain’
These groups of floating voters weren’t instinctively opposed to the public sector or government, and yet, for the NHS and other bits of the public realm, they really didn’t believe that funding was the answer to broken Britain. Essentially, they wanted the whole edifice burnt to the ground and rebuilt. Investment looked and felt like throwing good money after bad. More money, they were sure, wouldn’t fix it on its own.
The link between public investment and improved the link between public investment and improved public services seems to be broken. Why? Right now, the idea that things can get better is very hard for people to imagine. So the Keir Starmer administration will need to prove otherwise within a fiscal envelope very similar to the one we have now. It is surely no coincidence that this is aligned with both June’s election messaging and the strategy the government is being forced to adopt by the balance book they inherited in the treasury.
And then this from the PM earlier this week, launching the Darzi report in the future of the health service: “The NHS is at a fork in the road, and we have a choice about how it should meet these rising demands. Raise taxes on working people to meet the ever-higher costs of ageing population, or reform to secure its future. We know working people can’t afford to pay more, so it’s reform or die.”
It’s so aligned with my focus groups, it could almost be a quote from one of our participants.
WATCH: PM warns ‘no more money without reform’ after damning Darzi report
‘Starmer’s job is to prove public services can improve through reform’
Proponents of high public spending should not be too depressed, however. They should not automatically assume that we are in a low public investment doom loop.
Indeed, just because they don’t want to pay for it right now, it doesn’t mean voters don’t believe there is a huge role for the state in their lives. More now than ever, possibly. We are not a nation of American libertarians and never will be, despite what the modern Tory party might imagine.
As I’ve written about before for LabourList, I’ve never heard people in focus groups complain about the tax burden either.
All of which means that Starmer’s job in the next handful of years will be to prove that things can get better, and that public services can improve through reform. At that point, and probably only then, will voters be happy for more of their money to be spent on them.
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