Here at Portland one of the ways we keep a finger on the pulse of government is by taking polling seriously. A key insight that many of our most senior staff bring with them working inside Westminster and Whitehall is that public opinion drives so many decisions. So last week – with Labour conference just days away – was a good time to see what the public is making of this government.
And it’s not good news for ministers, to be honest. None of the lights on the political dashboard are looking especially green. A fair few are flashing amber. And there are some long-term hazards which are looking decidedly red.
The better news is that on the five key “missions” the jury of the public is still out. This has been a bumpy few weeks for the new-ish government – but the political terms of trade have not greatly changed. Everyone in Labour high command always knew that this was a government which had to deliver. That was always going to take time.
But the bald fact is that as things stand a majority of all voters – 54% – say that this government is performing worse than they expected. That includes 28% of people who say they voted Labour in July.
The freebies row has clearly caused some quite serious damage. 30% of all voters say that this government is less honest than the previous one. That compares with 24% who say it is more honest. 34% say they are about the same. A significant slice of people who didn’t vote Tory or Reform agree so this is not just anti-Labourism. 13% of people who voted Labour in July say they are less honest, and 15% of LibDem 2024 voters.
There are similar numbers on competence. 36% say this government is less competent than the Tories, 23% say they are more competent than the previous government while 31% say they are about the same. 13% of Labour 2024 voters say less competent with 23% of 2024 LibDems agreeing.
Some of what is driving this is an emerging problem with older voters – driven probably by the Winter Fuel Payment row. A stonking 84% of over 65s and 65% of 55-64s say Labour is falling short of expectations.
But if there short-term grumbling, then the overall mood on Labour’s five missions is – while not exactly optimistic – less pessimistic perhaps.
On none of the five missions is there a majority saying that progress is less than expected. It hovers around the 30-40 per cent mark on all of them. While only the low teens – Labour’s “true believers” say that progress is greater than they expected, meaningful numbers either say progress is about what they expected or that it’s “too early to tell”. Which is pretty sensible, to be honest.
The bad news is that progress is seen as significantly weaker on the three most electorally salient “missions” the economy, crime and the NHS. Fewer people are damning on education and clean energy – but these are much less salient. They decide relatively few votes, in other words.
Meanwhile there are two issues which suggest additional trouble coming down the track. Where Labour has splashed the cash so far is public sector pay. But this is the wrong priority, according to a lot of voters. We asked poll respondents to say whether they agreed with two statements more.
One was: “Key public services like the NHS, schools and the railways will only get better if they have enough staff and those staff are happy with their pay. Therefore, big pay awards for staff in public services are the right priority at the moment.”
The other was: “Any spare money that the government has should be spent on key public services themselves (more hospital beds, repairing school buildings, additional train services etc) rather than on big pay awards for the staff who run them.”
Respondents could also reply that they agreed with neither statement, agreed equally with both of them or say that they didn’t know.
Overall, just 23% agreed that pay should be the priority while 39% said it should be services. There was a similar figure of 36% supporting services when it came to Labour 2024 voters, 32% saying pay, and 17% saying they agreed equally.
There were big differences between people who lived in households where they, or the main income earner, worked in the public sector and ones headed up by private sector staff.
Just 19% of private sector workers – the vast majority of the workforce – said pay should be the priority, while 42% said it should be services. But even in public sector households, services were seen as a priority – albeit by a small margin (34% versus 32%) with 14% saying they should be an equal priority.
When the only major spending so far announced by this government being on major pay awards for train drivers, junior doctors and teachers this is significant. We deliberately phrased the “pay” question in a slightly loaded way. Without that, the numbers would probably be even more stark. The sense that public service providers are being privileged over public sector users should be another warning light for this government.
Further hazards lie ahead. We offered a simple binary choice on the NHS – something I’ve used in focus groups quite a lot. Respondents were asked if what the NHS needed was “More money” or “Better organisation”. Cash or reform, in other words. Health Secretary and eager reformer Wes Streeting will be pleased to hear that that overall, 59% said the NHS needs better organisation, with just 32% saying cash was the answer.
But again there was a very big divergence between public sector households and private sector ones. A very big proportion of the latter preferred better organisation with 64% choosing reform and just 28% choosing cash. While there was still a plurality – 49% – of public sector households choosing better organisation, a much bigger number – 41% – chose cash.
This suggests Labour is heading for substantial workforce trouble if it tries to deliver the kind of reform that Streeting in particular has said he want to see. The scars on his back that Tony Blair talked about after trying to introduce reforms into a much more benign fiscal environment could yet start to look like minor scratches if this is going to be a reforming rather than a spending government. And given there is little money unless taxes go up by a very large amount with a larger number than just the super-rich paying the price, that is not much of a choice at all.
Portland conducted polling among a sample of 1,003 UK adults, between 18th and 19th September 2024. Data weighted to be nationally and politically representative. The research explored current perceptions of the Labour government and other salient political issues. Data tables are available here.