The resignation of Iain Duncan Smith from the work and pensions brief followed national media coverage of a very poorly received budget, reflected in YouGov polling, and seeing the Conservatives slip behind Labour for the first time in months.
What is interesting is that not only was this budget unpopular, it was, according to the YouGov polling, seen as the least fair budget the Conservatives have ever presided over in their last two terms of government. Only 28 per cent of people said that they thought the budget was fair – in 2012, after the Omnishambles budget, 32 per cent thought it was fair. It is worth examining why.
In many respects, the tone of this budget was not dissimilar to previous budgets. Osborne’s proposals were designed to affect those who fell within categories least likely to vote Conservative, and within that envelope, he also proposed to redistribute to wealthier voters. He has consistently delivered budgets of this ilk. He has phased Disability Living Allowance out and chosen to introduce Personal Independence Payments, introduced universal credit and capped housing benefit.
A tough approach to DLA in particular was seen as a crowd-pleaser – in 2010 a YouGov poll suggested that this was one of the most popular policies proposed by the Conservatives; 69 per cent of respondents in a 2010 YouGov poll said that they supported more stringent testing of DLA.
So given these trends – why was this particular Budget so unpopular?
All data above is from YouGov/Sunday Times post-budget polling
What is striking about the above graph is not just that the perceived fairness of the budget has hit its lowest point over the past six years, but also, so has public judgement about Osborne’s overall competence (the exact YouGov question is ‘Do you think Osborne is doing a good job or a bad job as chancellor of the exchequer’? The line maps out the percentage of respondents who think he is doing a good job).
In addition the extent to which public judgement about fairness mirrors public judgement about the chancellor’s overall competence should provide plenty of food for thought.
Competence
It needs to be observed that not only is perceived fairness at its lowest point, so too is Osborne’s personal rating about whether or not he is doing a good job following this budget. There are, I suggest, a number of reasons driving this decline.
First, an unconvincing economic narrative. This time around the budget was unpopular not just because the policies driving the budgets were unpopular (although two – academisation of schools and cuts to PIP – undoubtedly were) but also because the competence of the Conservatives is in question. It was difficult for the Conservatives, distracted by other battles and projecting an appearance of internal division to simultaneously exhibit competence. As a result, they failed to make the case for their trade-offs or for why these were in the nation’s social and economic interests. In addition, they failed to persuade voters of the necessity for those trade-offs.
Second, austerity is being seen as increasingly unnecessary. The arguments voters encountered in the past were that cuts to disability benefits were part of a wider agenda to manage a deficit, and that all parts of the electorate needed to bear the cost. Having delivered successive rounds of cuts this may suggest that the electorate are beginning to view Conservative budgets as unnecessarily austere and, consequently, ineffective.
The argument here is that ‘more of the same’ is insufficient for the Conservatives to continue to build public confidence in the government’s economic policy.
Changing social attitudes towards need
It is very difficult to find historical data about public attitudes to specific forms of welfare, especially in-work welfare or welfare that affects those in need such as disability-specific allowances.There is also very little available data about attitudes towards in-work tax credits, the bedroom tax, DLA and PIP, and the distinction between public attitudes towards these and say, unemployment benefit. This in and of itself is telling, especially as recent events have demonstrated the different attitudes voters have to different forms of welfare.
But we do know that public attitudes towards disability have changed markedly in the last 20 years. This is borne out by recent research by disability charity Scope. A shift in social attitudes towards disability and more broadly, towards need, over the past 20 years may well have contributed towards this budget’s perceived unfairness. This may also go some way towards explaining the success of other campaigns; for instance, that against the bedroom tax and against cuts to working tax credits. These trends cannot be discounted in considering why the budget was seen as so unpopular, and also as unfair.
The perfect storm
The budget appears to have been unpopular because of a ‘perfect storm’ of a range of factors; perceived incompetence on the part of the Conservative party contributed, as did the perceived unfairness of specific policies set out within the Budget envelope. Changing social and public attitudes towards specific forms of welfare – in-work welfare or disability-specific welfare – also drove perceptions, and in turn seemed to influence public perception about the chancellor’s ability to ‘do a good job’.
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Reema Patel is national secretary of Disability Labour. She is also an executive committee member of the Fabian Society and the Fabian Women’s Network
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