Two in three Britons lack confidence in government’s long term economic plan

New polling by Ipsos in the UK, taken 28-29 September shows strong public concern at the state of the economy and a lack of confidence in the current government’s handling of it.

Perceptions of the economy

• 80% consider the state of the British economy to be poor. This compares to 77% last weekend, 72% in May this year, 69% in March and 59% in November 2021. The proportion that say ‘very poor’ is 50% today whereas it was 37% last weekend.
• The top three factors that influence how the public judge the state of the economy are the level of inflation / price rises (68%), the strength of the pound (63%) and interest rates (57%). Whilst the importance of inflation and interest rates are similar to August (up 2 points respectively), the importance of sterling has jumped significantly in the public’s minds since then (+28 points).
• The public do not think the government are solely responsible for the rising cost of living in Britain today. 77% think the Russian invasion of Ukraine is to blame for the rising cost of living a great deal or fair amount (+4 pts since March) and 74% blame the state of the global economy (-3 pts). However, the 72% that blame the economic policies of the Conservative government is up 9 points from March and is third on the list. Two in three blame businesses making excessive profits (66%, -1pt) and the Covid-19 pandemic (66%, -12pts).
• Public concern about the rising cost of living remains high (88%), with 76% concerned about how they will pay energy bills, 68% concerned about the value of their savings and 65% concerned about rising interest rates. There is little change in the degree of concern seen in these areas since August.

Perceptions of the government’s economic response

• Two-thirds (68%) of people are not confident that the Conservative government have a good long-term economic plan for Britain, while 25% of people say they are confident in the Government’s plans. Labour fares better, with 38% of people saying they are confident in Labour’s plans, compared to 52% that are not.
• Just over half of people (53%) think Kwasi Kwarteng is doing a bad job as Chancellor (including 48% of 2019 Conservative voters), with just 16% of the public overall saying he is doing a good job. This is 13 percentage points lower than Rishi Sunak (29%) in April 2022. At that time, 44% thought Sunak was doing a bad job. This was his worst score but is 9 points less than Kwarteng now.