70% of Britons think the government is managing the economy badly, with few expecting them to meet their economic targets
Yesterday, Rachel Reeves delivered her first spring statement as chancellor, outlining a series of significant public spending cuts amid a backdrop of more sluggish growth forecasts.
A new YouGov poll captures the public sentiment on the economy following the fiscal announcements.
Three quarters of Britons (77%) see the economy as being in a bad state at the moment, including a third (34%) who see Britain’s economy as being in a very bad way. This compares to one in six (16%) viewing the UK economy as being in neither a good nor bad state at present, while just 4% would describe the economy as even quite good.
Negativity about the economy is highest among those who voted for right-wing parties, with 92% of Reform UK voters and 84% of Conservatives seeing the economy as being in a poor state. But even among Labour voters, two-thirds (66%) believe the British economy is in a bad way right now, a view shared by 69% of Lib Dems.
Seven in ten Britons (70%) believe the government have managed the economy badly since they came to power, compared to just 19% who feel they have been successful in their handling of the matter. This represents a slightly worse result than the last Conservative government scored on the eve of the 2024 election, at which point 68% said they were doing badly and 27% well.
Even among those who voted for the government last July, the 48% of Labour voters who think the government have managed the economy badly outnumber the 37% who feel they’ve done well.
Rachel Reeves also gets a poor assessment from the British public, with 55% saying she has done a bad job as chancellor, compared to one in seven (14%) deeming her to have done a good job.
Labour voters are split 28% to 33% on whether Reeves has performed well or poorly at the treasury, though four in ten (39%) are unsure how to assess the chancellor’s tenure. Voters for other parties are clearer, with 49% of Lib Dems, 81% of Conservatives and 86% of Reform UK saying Reeves has done a bad job so far.
With the OBR halving its UK growth forecast for 2025 to 1.0%, 65% of Britons likewise say they think the economic situation of the country will deteriorate over the next 12 months. And with inflation set to average 3.2% over the course of this year – itself an upwards revision from 2.6% in the previous OBR forecast – 54% likewise expect their own household finances to get worse.
Just 11-12% of Britons expect improvement on either measure.
At the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan famously asked voters whether they felt better off than they did four years prior – we put the reverse to Britons, asking them if they expected the economy and their finances to be better by the time of the next election. The outcome is not good for Starmer and Reeves, with two thirds (66%) seeing economic improvement as unlikely and a similar number (67%) saying so of their own finances.
The public are even more sceptical that Labour will have balanced the budget by 2029 (74% think it is unlikely, as does the Office for Budget Responsibility), with a majority (58%) also saying they don’t expect inflation to have fallen to the Bank of England target of 2% by 2027, as forecasted by the OBR.
Do you think the government will meet its targets? What do you think about the state of the economy in general, and everything else? Have your say, join the YouGov panel, and get paid to share your thoughts. Sign up here.
Photo: Getty
