Upon the announcement of Liz Truss becoming Prime Minister, four in ten (44%) UK business leaders agree that her government would have a negative impact on the UK’s economy, according to the latest Business Tracker data from Savanta.
Four in ten (42%) business leaders in medium and large businesses say the announcement of Liz Truss becoming Prime Minister was good news for UK businesses, but that drops to three in ten (29%) among small businesses.
Prior to the mini-budget, four in ten (43%) UK business leaders agree cutting taxes and cancelling the National Insurance rise wouldn’t help stimulate growth, increasing to more than half (53%) of those from medium and large businesses.
Half (52%) of UK business leaders agree that capping the energy rate would be of significant help to their business, including 58% of medium and large business and 49% of small businesses. However, only one in three (33%) UK business leaders agree that Truss’s suggested policies, trailed before the mini-budget, would help tackle the big issues facing the UK economy, such as inflation and energy prices.
Although UK business leaders show they did not have much hope in Truss’s economic strategy, marginally more say they would prefer Truss (28%) over Sunak (21%) as Prime Minister.
Business leaders also narrowly favoured Liz Truss over Boris Johnson, with a third (34%) saying she’ll be a better PM and a quarter (27%) saying she’ll be worse.
And even prior to the mini-budget announcement, Kwasi Kwarteng did not inspire much confidence among UK business leaders, with just one in five (20%) saying he’d do a good job as Chancellor, compared to the quarter (25%) who say he’d do a poor job.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new Business Secretary, inspires even less confidence, with four in ten (37%) UK business leaders saying he would do a bad job and only 19% saying he would do a good job.
Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta ComRes said, “While the fieldwork dates must be noted here, the key takeaway is that UK business leaders had little confidence in Truss and her new administration even before the calamitous mini-budget and subsequent polling crash.”
“However, the glimmer of hope here is that larger businesses – the ones Truss hopes will benefit from her policies, invest in the UK, and generate growth – tend to be slightly more favourable than those smaller businesses and sole traders.
“If Truss can prove her ideology to be the right path for Britain, it’ll be the decisions of business leaders such as these that could be the turning point for her and her government’s popularity.”
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