Coalition winning argument on economy – poll

[Hopeless Romantic]

Guardian/ICM poll to mark 100 days of coalition shows strong support for government's cuts-based recovery strategy

David Cameron's first 100 days in Downing Street have witnessed the coalition win the key argument over the economy with a Guardian/ICM poll today showing that voters back austerity measures to reduce Britain's record peacetime budget deficit.

The monthly snapshot of public opinion suggests strong initial support for George Osborne's controversial cuts-based recovery strategy, with the chancellor re-iterating today that the government would wreck the economy if it "budged" from its plans to slash borrowing during the course of the parliament.

Despite claims from Labour that front-loaded spending cuts risk a double-dip recession and will hit the poorest the hardest, 44% of those polled said the coalition was doing a "good job" in securing economic recovery against 37% who said it was doing a "bad job".

The poll also showed voters were prepared to back Osborne, who has so far been successful in blaming his inheritance from Alistair Darling for fiscal pain that will see VAT rise to 20% in January and the most sustained cut in public spending since the war. While a third of voters (33%) said the chancellor was doing a "bad job", 42% said he was doing a "good job".

Osborne sought today to convince voters that the coalition had no alternative but to take action to bring down borrowing, which he said was both fair and progressive. "We are all in this together", he said, repeating a key government message since the election.

While Labour believes that the mood of voters will change in 2011 when VAT rises to 20% and spending cuts start to bite, today's poll indicates that Cameron is still enjoying a political honeymoon. Today's poll show that 57% of voters think he is doing a good job and 52% believe he can be trusted to "make the right decisions when the going gets tough".

More generally, the coalition remains reasonably popular, with 46% of voters deeming it to be doing a good job in running the country as against 36% who say it is doing a bad job, a 10-point margin in its favour which has drifted down from the 23 point advantage recorded when a similar question was asked in June.

But despite some reasonably strong personal numbers for the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, when it comes to voting intentions there are clear signs that the first peace-time coalition in the era of universal suffrage is serving his Liberal Democrats less well than the Tories.

Where the Conservatives are holding on to the 37% vote share which achieved in the election, a quarter of those who backed the Lib Dems then have since switched sides, leaving the third party on just 18% – down one point on the month, and six on the election.

Many of these deserters have drifted towards Labour taking its standing to 37%, and allowing that leaderless party to run the Tories level for the first time in three years.The polarising economic argument underlies this political drift. By a margin of 77% to 9% Conservative voters are emphatically behind the coalition on the economy, just as Labour voters are strongly against them on the recovery, by 63% to 22%.

Osborne's personal ratings are similarly polarised. He is wildly popular among Tory voters – who by a ten-fold margin of 76% to 7% rate him as doing a good job. But he gets the thumbs down from 58% of Labour supporters, and produces another near-even 41%-39% split among those who voted Liberal Democrat last time around.

The chancellor rejected claims yesterday that his fast-track approach to deficit reduction represented a "gamble" with growth.

"In fact the reverse is true", he said . "The gamble would have been not to act, to put Britain's reputation at risk, and to leave the stability of the economy to the vagaries of the bond market, assuming investors around the world would continue to tolerate the largest budget deficit in the G20."

Recent economic data has suggested that the pace of growth has slackened in recent weeks following the rapid 1.1% expansion in the second quarter. House prices have been slipping and consumer confidence dented by the austerity measures outlined in June's emergency budget.

The chancellor insisted, however, that there would be no backsliding from the coalition. "Britain now has a credible plan to deal with our record deficit. We must stick by it. To budge from that plan now would risk reigniting the markets' suspicions that Britain does not have the will to pay her way in the world. I will not take that risk".

The chancellor said the government wanted better value for money for public spending. "It is not about how much the government spends but about what the government does with the money. We want to be laying the foundations for economic growth and a fairer society."

The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said: "The chancellor has a different definition of fairness to the rest of us. His spending cuts are hitting the most vulnerable, his one big tax rise was VAT – the unfairest tax of all – and his economic policies are bearing down on the young, trapped between unemployment and an education sector with not enough places.

Darling said: "There's nothing "pro-growth" about taking a huge gamble with the recovery – with people's jobs. And there's nothing "fair" or "progressive" about George Osborne's budget hitting the poorest in our society hardest. He doesn't seem to understand that in government it's decisions, not warm words, that count."

• ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1001 adults aged 18+ by telephone on 13th-15th August 2010. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/17/coalition-poll-winning-economy

[LeftishBrit]

1. Suspect that will change once the cuts are implemented and start to bite.